Lemelson Center Graduate Student Archival Internship (Paid Opportunity)
Archives Center, National Museum of American History
Application
Details
Posted: 22-Jan-25
Location: Washington, D.C.
Type: Full Time (In-Office)
Salary: $7,000
Categories:
Museum Archives
Personal Papers & Manuscripts
Special Collections
Pay Frequency:
Annual
Salary Details:
Internship stipends issued by the Smithsonian are not considered salary or meant as compensation but are awarded to help defray living expenses for an intern during the term of their appointment. Interns awarded stipends who are US residents for tax purposes are responsible for meeting their individual state and federal tax obligations and will receive a financial summary around March of the following year for the previous calendar year. Interns who are not US residents for tax purposes will receive an IRS Form 1042-S and are likewise responsible for meeting all tax obligations. The stipend distribution process takes six weeks from the time Office of Fellowships and Internships (OFI) receives an accepted intern's stipend paperwork, and stipends cannot be distributed before the start of an internship. Stipend payments are released on the 10th and 25th of each month, and the frequency of payments is decided by OFI depending on the stipend amount.
Applications for Summer 2025 are due by March 14, 2025 (11:59 ET).
The Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation(link is external) at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, offers a full time, 10-week, archival internship opportunity for one graduate student each summer. The internship stipend is $7,000. Housing, benefits, and transportation are not provided. The internship is located in the Museum's Archives Center(link is external), a manuscripts and special collections repository with more than 1,600 collections documenting a wide range of subject areas.
THE INTERNSHIP WILL:
Enable new professionals to understand, identify, and manage the historical records of American invention and innovation;
Expose interns to the Museum's rich historical collections in the history of technology and 20th century material culture;
Provide hands-on experience with archival collections that document invention and innovation;
Create EAD finding aids to collections documenting invention and innovation using ArchivesSpace;
Engage interns in discussion of archival issues and practices and provide a wide range of professional experiences within the Museum.
Complete applications must include the following: -Internship Program application form in SOLAA (Select Program 3998) -Graduate transcript(s) (unofficial transcripts are acceptable) -Resume -Prepare a two-page double-spaced statement of interest addressing the following points: 1.) Describe what you hope to learn through an internship at the Smithsonian and how this experience would impact your academic and career interests. 2.) Discuss any prior academic and/or career-building experiences you might have that could align with this internship opportunity; and 3.) Discuss your interest in the archival profession. -Two (2) letters of reference
Applications must be submitted via the SOLAA(link is external) system by 11:59 p.m. EST on March 14, 2025. An offer will be made by mid-April. The internship begins on or after June 2, 2025.
For further information, contact: Alison L. Oswald, Archivist National Museum of American History Smithsonian Institution Archives Center, Room 1100, MRC 601 P.O. Box 37012 Washington, DC 20013-7012 Phone (202) 633-3726 Fax (202) 312-1990. Email: oswalda@si.edu
ELIGIBILITY:
Applicants must be currently enrolled in a library/archives/information program. Preference is given for completed graduate course work in archival, library, or information management. Recent graduates from library/archives/information programs may also apply. Individuals must have completed their graduate degrees no more than one year prior to the application deadline. Current undergraduates are not eligible to apply.
The internship is open to students of all nationalities. United States citizenship is not required. If the selected intern is a non-US citizen, they will be required to work with the Smithsonian’s Office of Fellowships and Internships and the Office of Global Affairs to determine if they require a visa and are eligible for visa sponsorship by the Smithsonian.
About Archives Center, National Museum of American History
The Archives Center was created in the early 1980s to serve as a repository for archival collections from throughout the National Museum of American History and to acquire additional collections in support of the museum's research, exhibition, and collecting programs.
The collections complement the Museum's artifact holdings and are used for scholarly research, exhibitions, publications, documentary productions, school programs, and other research and educational activities.
The Archives Center currently has more than 1,600 collections stored in the American History building and at off-site storage locations. In addition to paper-based textual records, many of the collections contain photographs, motion picture films, videotapes, and sound recordings. Increasingly, the collections include born digital documents in a wide variety of formats.
The collections are particularly rich in the areas of technology, consumer culture including advertising and marketing, invention and innovation, popular music, African American history and culture, and many other topics that document the American experience.
With few exceptions, Archives Center collections are acquired by donation, ...often in conjunction with the acquisition of related artifacts and in collaboration with the Museum's curatorial staff. Documentation projects -- including oral and video histories -- actively create new research collections. The Museum's ability to acquire and care for artifacts and archival materials in all physical formats and to generate contemporary documentation gives it a unique capacity to record the complexity and richness of the American experience.