IMLS 21st Century Librarian Grant: Digital Humanities Model Internship Program

Digital humanities centers, with their scholarly focus and technical expertise, offer an environment that
naturally draws students’ interest and attention. Those with the capacity to provide space, projects, training, and supervision for interns find that the students have much to offer the centers in enthusiasm, a theoretical grounding in issues, and in their abilities to contribute to research projects that further the center’s goals. Some may have significant technical expertise that will benefit the work of humanities scholars associated with a center, but will learn much about digital scholarship by working in a team environment.  At this point, however, there are no programs to assist advanced either iSchool students or digital humanities centers in placing interns.  This project is to fill this need by developing a robust and sustainable program for placing interns within digital humanities centers.

Three graduate iSchools–the University of Maryland College of Information Studies, the University of Michigan School of Information, and the University of Texas Austin School of Information–have agreed to collaborate deeply with three nationally-recognized digital humanities centers (MITH, CDRH, and MATRIX) to create a model internship program for students interested in careers in digital humanities centers and digital libraries. The purposes of this program are to address some of the recommendations in the ACLS report by enhancing education and training opportunities offered by graduate programs of library and information science and iSchools with internships specifically oriented toward the work of digital humanities centers.
The project will:

• Foster in a cadre of graduate students a deeper understanding of digital libraries and digital humanities scholarship.
• Provide faculty in three iSchools opportunities and incentives to examine digital humanities and digital libraries issues intently, opening opportunities for collaborative research and scholarship.
• Generate a syllabus for a digital humanities LIS course that will be taught by one or more of theiSchool faculty participating in the grant in the third year of the program and released widely under a Creative Commons license.
• Generate a white paper describing lessons learned from the internship program— from the perspectives of faculty in iSchools or library and information science programs, the faculty in digital humanities centers, and from that of the students themselves.