Library Collections Assistant Internship

NOTE: Applications submitted through Handshake will NOT be considered.

Desired Majors and Areas of Study: Library Science, Library Studies, and Information Management

The National Museum of African American History & Culture (NMAAHC) Library is a research library devoted to collecting and providing access to resources that support scholarship in African American history, culture, and the African Diaspora. The Library also supports research in genealogy and family history. It features a reading room, public computer stations, scanner, stack space for 11,000 volumes, electronic and print resources, and an exhibit case. The NMAAHC Library is one of 21 branches that comprises the larger Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.

The library’s primary mission is to provide support for the research, exhibition, and programmatic endeavors of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). It does this by collecting, preserving, and providing access to resources and scholarship in the subjects of African American history and culture. The broader mission is to assist in supporting the scholarly needs of the Smithsonian Institution (SI) as a whole, as well as the independent research community who also utilize the library’s resources and services.

Library Collections Assistant Intern will focus on collections evaluation and development. The intern will assist the NMAAHC librarians in evaluating un-accessioned books acquired through donation and gifts, to determine their suitability for the NMAAHC Library collection, or another SI Library based on a given criteria. This work will entail searching the Smithsonian’s online catalog, SIRIS, and the global cooperative catalog, WorldCat, and possibly other bibliographic tools such as book dealers’ websites as well as the internet in general. This work supports the library in its mission of increasing the library’s collection with materials that support the research needs of the museum. The head librarian will supervise and further evaluate the materials for compatibility to the goals and overall mission of the library. The selected applicant will learn and deepen their understanding of bibliographic data, how it relates to collections management and library research. By working in tandem with the library staff, the intern will gain insight into library collections development, collections evaluation, and collections-based research in a research library.

This internship requires the ability to commute. Work will take place in the NMAAHC Library on the Mall, and at times offsite at the Smithsonian Research Library Annex, SLRA, our library branch at Pennsy.

Duties Include (but are not limited to):

• Evaluating gifts materials 
• Searching library holdings in SIRIS and other US libraries for similar titles
• checking for duplicate materials within libraries at SI, and notating the condition of the materials under evaluation
• Entering data in a spreadsheet detailing the categories for each title according to the given criteria
• Work with the librarians on the preparation of the books selected for the NMAAHC Library, or those that will be offered to other SI libraries, or those designated for the bookseller