The Archives’ Oral History Program began in 1958 and includes interviews with American artists, scholars, critics, collectors, dealers, supporters, and others involved in American art. Today, our recordings make up the world’s largest collection of oral histories on the subject of American art, allowing scholars to learn about the art world directly from the words of our nation’s most distinguished artists.
In this Oral History Management internship you will be immersed in what goes into the management of a longstanding and ongoing oral history program. All of our legacy interviews have been fully digitized for preservation and access. A major initiative is ingesting the audio files into our CIS and DAMS. All of our ongoing oral history interviews are recorded as digital audio or video files conducted by outside interviewers. Most of our interviews are transcribed or captioned (especially current interviews) by a transcription company. There is an extensive review process of these documents before they are presented online. In addition to our ongoing initiatives, our backlog and legacy interviews are a high priority for finalization and access on the website.
Among other tasks interns may:
Requirements and Qualifications:
Outcomes: You will come away with a greater understanding of the planning and management of an oral history program; skills in digital preservation and file management; and insight into an organization’s policies, procedures, and workflow.
Availability: Spring/Fall internships are generally 20 hours/week for 16 weeks. Summer internships are generally 40 hours/week for 10 weeks. These hours are flexible.
Interested graduate students may contact Jennifer Snyder, Oral History Program Archivist, at snyderj@si.edu for more information.
The Archives of American Art collects primary source materials—original letters, writings, preliminary sketches, scrapbooks, photographs, financial records and the like—that have significant research value for the study of art in America.
Find out how to give your papers, records, recordings, or other primary source material to the Archives of American Art.
Internship, fellowship, and volunteer opportunities provide students and lifelong learners with the ability to contribute to the study and preservation of visual arts records in America.
You can help make digitized historical documents more findable and useful by transcribing their text.
Visit the Archives of American Art project page in the Smithsonian Transcription Center now.
