Timothy Leary Papers - Digital Archival Processing Internship

Description

Timothy Leary Papers - Digital Archival Processing Internship - Fall 2012

The Manuscripts and Archives Division at The New York Public Library is offering an internship to aid the Digital and Project Archivists for the Timothy Leary Papers for the fall term to students from a Master’s program in librarianship, archival studies, or preservation with an interest in the born digital materials in the papers.

The Papers document the life of Timothy Francis Leary (b. 1920, d. 1996), American psychologist and Harvard professor, who, through his studies regarding the use of psilocybin and LSD, went on to become an advocate for mind-altering drugs, eastern philosophy, sexual liberation, cyberspace and the cyberpunk genre. He was a prolific writer, lecturer, and counterculture icon (1960s - 1990s). The Papers contain material from notable figures, such as Richard Alpert (aka Ram Dass), William S. Burroughs, David Bryne, Larry Flynt,  Allen Ginsberg, Keith Haring, Gerald Heard, Abbie and Anita Hoffman, Albert Hofmann, Aldous and Laura Huxley, Jack Kerouac, Art Kleps, and G. Gorden Liddy. The Papers include over a hundred floppy disks created or collected by Leary in a variety of formats.

Responsibilities:

The digital intern for the Timothy Leary Papers will assist the Digital Archivist in performing preservation imaging of removable media and the extraction and analysis of metadata from the created images. The intern will also work with the Project Archivist of the Leary papers in making appraisal and description recommendations on the materials using digital forensics tools and technologies.

The ideal candidate for the digital internship will have a thorough understanding of archival theory, familiarity with aspects of computer sciences as they relate to archives (metadata, databases etc.) and must be extremely detailed oriented.

Hours Requirements

Timeframe: 120 hours over 12 weeks
Schedule: 10 hours per week (All interns must commit to schedule at least four hours on one day; otherwise hours are flexible).
Working hours: Monday - Friday: 9:00am - 5:00pm.

This is an unpaid internship that may be used for credit toward a Master's Degree in a Library Science program.  Internships need not be taken for credit.  All students must be currently enrolled.  Attendance at an orientation session is required.