Guest Blog About Internships

Posted March 8, 2017 by Katie Olivo

We have a special guest blog post this week by current SLIS student, Sarah Nafis.

Sarah is in her second year of the dual Archives/History (MS/MA) program. Since moving to Boston, she’s exploring the city one restaurant at a time and has learned to embrace the quirks of public transportation.

Exploring Internship Opportunities

It’s hard to believe that it’s spring break and the semester is already halfway over. Summer will be here before you know it. This year instead of taking summer classes, I decided look for a summer internship.

One of the great parts of being at SLIS is the exposure to practical, hands-on skills and experiences inside and outside the classroom. Since starting at SLIS, I’ve already had two internships. My first internship at the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts was part of the Introduction to Archives course (LIS 438). LIS 438 is one of the first courses archives students take and a 60 hour internship is built into the class. Simmons has a wide network of internship sites and students are typically matched with one of their top three choices from the LIS 438 internship database.

It’s also possible to find internships on your own that are not taken for credit. There are mulitple ways to learn about internships. Faculty and student organizations will email possible job and internship opportunities. The Jobline is another great resources for students look for internships. And finally, there’s your personal and/or professional network. I found my current internship at Harvard’s Collection of Historical Scientific instruments (CHSI)  via a co-worker. CHSI has a large collection of physical objects as well as books and archival materials relating to the objects in the collection. My supervisors worked with me to tailor my internship experience around my interests. I’m working with a collection of records for a Boston surveying company to create an online finding aid and exploring digital preservation possibilities. This internship has been a great learning experience, especially because I don’t have a background in science or surveying instruments. But now I can use Mino-Blake-type automatic rotary microtome (a tool to cut extremely thin slices of materials for samples) in a sentence. If you’re interested in seeing the collection, CHSI currently has two exhibits, Life, Time & Matter: Science in Cambridge and Scale: A Matter of Perspective (opening 3/10/2017).