Special Collections Learning Lab Looking for Interns

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Sept. 8, 2014) — University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center has announced the upcoming projects for this year’s Learning Lab internship. The Special Collections Learning Lab is a center of primary research, experiential learning, and training targeted to UK undergraduates in various disciplines who want to enhance their studies through training in archival methods and theory. Applications for fall and spring internships are due Sept. 19.

Interns with the Special Collections Learning Lab will be taught to arrange and describe rare or unique collections in their area of research interest, and enhance access to those collections through the broader academic community through creating guides, exhibits or transcriptions. Interns will also produce a final scholarly project, such as a poster, presentation or exhibit, reflecting on the impact the internship had on their research.

Interns will be expected to work five to 10 hours a week and will receive $8.80 per hour.

Students interested in internships with the Special Collections Learning Lab this fall or spring will have the opportunity to work with several collections related to such topics as local food; the architectural history of Lexington and the state; the Cakes and Ale Club; drug research, treatments and policy; papers from various historic Kentucky families; and the Amber Moon theater troupe.

A joint, multimedia processing project on local food, involving a minimum of two interns, will make collections related to Kentucky’s food history and culture more accessible through cataloging oral histories with UK's own OHMS technology and digitization of photos, cookbooks or other ephemera. Interns will gain experience in all of these areas, including arrangement and description of a collection, transcription and analysis of controlled vocabulary using Library of Congress subject headings. The project is largely designed to increase visibility through catalog access, and the interns will create a final multimedia exhibit pulling all of the formats together.

A second project, suited for individuals interested in STEM research, will make accessible a collection that highlights Lexington and Kentucky’s architectural history. Interns will process the Frankel and Curtis blueprints and papers. This project lends itself to integration of GIS technology and the student should also be prepared to put historical preservation into context locally. The intern will learn about conservation and will arrange and describe the collection, as well as digitize a sample of the collection. This project will also include analysis of a National Register of Historic Places application.

Another intern will get the opportunity to process a collection related to prominent Lexington lawyer Samuel M. Wilson, who founded the Cakes and Ale Club. The collection relates to lawyers, literature and dinner parties, but is relevant as a piece of local history. The intern will arrange, describe and preserve the collection and create a final project that links the collection Lexington’s history in a larger context.

The fourth project would compile and document from a variety of primary sources the history of Lexington’s “narcotics farm,” which treated and experimented on individuals with substance abuse issues from the early through mid-20th century. By gathering the primary source material from existing UK collections and other repositories, the intern would create a hidden collection that reveals much about the history of drug treatment and policy in the United States.

Papers from the Faulconer, Johnstone, Shelby, Tevis and Potter families are the subject of another project at the Special Collections Learning Lab. Using papers from a larger collection of documenting Kentucky history on such topics as the hemp industry, Southern economics, slave records and genealogy, interns will process collections and digitize elements for the ExploreUK repository making it accessible online to the public.

The last project will focus on Amber Moon scrapbooks. Interns would, after consulting with the libraries’ conservationist and Digital Library Services, preserve two scrapbooks from the local Lexington theater troupe and digitize elements of the collection. The troupe, which was established in 1977, was centered on women’s cultural arts performances, including some from the LGBTQ community. This collection will help round out history and documentation of progressive women’s issues in Lexington as they mirrored national cultural trends.

Interested applicants in the Special Collections Learning Lab internship are encouraged to submit a completed application form, found on the lab’s website at http://libraries.uky.edu/libpage.php?lweb_id=1052&llib_id=13, with cover letter, resume/CV, and one faculty reference by Friday, Sept. 19, to: Deirdre Scaggs, associate dean of Special Collections,  University of Kentucky Libraries, Margaret I. King Building, Lexington, KY, 40506-0039. To email an internship packet, send materials to deirdre@uky.edu.

UK Special Collections Research Center is home to UK Libraries' collection of rare books, Kentuckiana, the Archives, the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, the King Library Press, the Wendell H. Ford Public Policy Research Center and the Bert T. Combs Appalachian collection. The mission of the Special Collections Research Center is to locate and preserve materials documenting the social, cultural, economic and political history of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

MEDIA CONTACT: Whitney Hale, 859-257-8716; whitney.hale@uky.edu