Project Internship/Volunteer Opportunities

Internships typically require 150 hours of involvement (100-120 on a project, remainder on readings/ discussions and final report). They are supervised by Program Director Haven Hawley (Ph.D.) and are unpaid. Students arranging course credit for internships at a UMN or other university department are given first preference. Students are required to sign an internship contract, keep a journal for their faculty instructor, and provide a copy of a final report (or other research report, as assigned by instructor) to IHRC by the end of the internship semester. Internships are designed so that the student completes a project within the contractual volunteer period; intern contributions to IHRC projects are acknowledged on a level similar to that of staff.

We ask that all potential interns or volunteers attend at least one IHRC event or do some research in the collections prior to signing up for projects so that a fuller picture of the Center’s operations may inform discussions about volunteer opportunities. For information about the IHRC and events, visit www.ihrc.umn.edu.

Please e-mail IHRC Program Director Haven Hawley (ehh@umn.edu) if you are interested in one of the internships below.

Exhibitions & Collections Internships/Volunteers

Student will get experience in contracts, checking in items/checking out items, consulting with designer and exhibition coordinator about fixtures, placement, and security, etc. Student will do research in relevant archival unit to select appropriate local additions. Student will work on audience development, from publicity/marketing to community outreach, for events associated with exhibition. Where foreign language expertise is required for exhibition research, IHRC will pair student with community volunteer (typically from that ethnic community) or scholar.

Exhibition Internship December 2011-January 2012 (with additional work during exhibition January-March 2012)

“Siberian Estonians” (which originated as an exhibition about migration from that country to Siberia) will be exhibited on the 2nd/3rd floors of Elmer L. Andersen Library from January to early March 2012. The traveling exhibition will be combined with IHRC archival materials about the migration of an Estonian through Siberia to the United States. IHRC will be preparing a case of materials to add to the wall-hung images and prepared panels. An opening event will be planned as part of the IHRC's Volunteer Appreciation Reception in early March, timed to welcome visiting scholars from the National Archives of Estonia (NAE) to Andersen Library. The IHRC has a partnership with NAE that brings two archivists to University of Minnesota each year to help process the Center’s Estonian American collections, which are the largest cluster of Estonian diaspora materials in the world. Minimum volunteer commitment: 40 hours

Exhibition Internship February-May 2012 (for exhibition April-May 2012)

"Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals" is a traveling exhibition of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that will be shown on the 2nd/3rd floors of Elmer L. Andersen Library April-May 2012. The panels of this exhibition traveled to Minneapolis YMCA early in the exhibition's life. In this return trip, they will be combined with archival items from the Children's Literature Research Collection, the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies and the Immigration History Research Center. The exhibition is timed to coincide with Jewish community commemoration of Jewish lives lost during the Holocaust. The IHRC program director will speak at an event regarding ethnic and social persecution systems of the Nazi regime, and the IHRC will encourage outreach to the Romanian, Jewish, GLBT and other communities. Partners include Tolerance Minnesota and Archives & Special Collections of University Libraries. Minimum volunteer commitment: 40 hours (60 preferred)

Archival Internship Spring 2012 and/or Summer 2012

The IHRC seeks an intern for the spring 2012 and/or summer 2012 semester to index the oldest portion of an unprocessed collection for an organization that resettled professional-career European refugees to the United States from the 1930s through the 1950s. The American Council for Emigres in the Professions Collection contains several clusters of materials documenting such efforts, and the series chosen for this project includes records pertaining primarily to Jewish physicians fleeing Nazi Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. The student will create an index of basic information about several thousand files in the physician series, allowing staff to make the collection more accessible to researchers while maintaining privacy of records. First preference for this internship will be given to a student conducting research in the history of medicine or a related discipline, particularly if related to a senior research project. Reading knowledge of German preferred. Some confidential materials may be included in the case files, and the intern will be advised accordingly. Minimum volunteer commitment: 150 hours within one semester (4 months)

Future Print Processing Projects (2012-2014)

We are interested in hearing from persons with language capabilities relevant to our collections who would be able to commit to short-term projects requiring 3-4 days of work. The language volunteers would assist staff in upcoming projects to process books and newspapers in foreign languages at IHRC. The projects will begin in summer 2012. For an indication of the languages in which we are interested, please see the IHRC's periodical listing at: http://www.ihrc.umn.edu/research/periodicals.php

The IHRC does not have openings for casual volunteers at this time, but we encourage those interested in short-term or informal projects to learn about the IHRC and consider becoming involved with Friends of the IHRC.

Project Internship/Volunteer Opportunities

Exhibitions & Collections Internships/Volunteers

The IHRC does not have openings for casual volunteers at this time, but we encourage those interested in short-term or informal projects to learn about the IHRC and consider becoming involved with Friends of the IHRC.

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