Princeton University Library (PUL) will be hiring a Library & Archives Research Assistant for a Summer 2022 internship through the Aspiring Scholars and Professionals (ASAP) cohort program at Princeton’s Emma Bloomberg Center for Access & Opportunity. ASAP is designed to introduce undergraduates from other New Jersey colleges and universities to higher education careers in the humanities and qualitative social sciences.

The nine-week summer internship at PUL, working with Valencia Johnson, Archivist for Student Life, and Sara Howard, Librarian for Gender and Sexuality Studies and Student Engagement, will provide the student researcher with the opportunity to explore primary source creation with processing oral history interviews and creating a secondary resource in the form of a libguide for the LGBTQIA+ periodicals and ephemera collection.

Howard and Johnson hope to show the intern many aspects of librarian work. “It is always a pleasure to share the different paths one takes to librarianship and demonstrate how the profession is ever evolving,” said Howard. “We hope to show the interns other facets of library work with a focus on library and campus wide collaborations.”
 
“There are many paths to enter into the archival profession too; library school, public history, and museum studies to name a few,” continued Johnson. “What is most exciting is the variety of interests and backgrounds that make the profession dynamic and ever changing.”

Day-to-day activities will be with staff in Special Collections and in Research Services but the student researcher will work with a variety of Library staff. The intern will leave the program with tangible items and skills – a website or blog post, processing an oral history, and publishing a libguide, for example. There will also be opportunities to meet with other Library summer interns.

There are two unique features of the ASAP program. First, interns are not only paired with a Princeton faculty or staff member, but also with faculty or staff members on their home campuses, for research or professional internships during the academic year. Second, the program hosts periodic programming at Princeton during the academic year following the internship to inspire cross-institutional connections. This programming brings together ASAP interns, their home campus mentors, and Princeton summer mentors.

Johnson concluded, “While we hope to provide an exciting introduction to academic libraries and archives, we are very excited to learn from the intern as well!”

All application materials, including the Personal Information Form, must be submitted no later than 11:59pm on Friday, April 1, 2022. To learn more about the Library and Research Assistant internship, and the other ASAP opportunities, please visit the ASAP website.

Published on March 18, 2022

Written by Stephanie Oster, Publicity Manager

Media Contact: Barbara Valenza, Director of Library Communications