Briscoe Center internships provide opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students as well as recent graduates to develop and enhance professional skills and gain vital work experience in related fields while working directly with historical evidence. The work assigned to interns advances the Briscoe Center’s mission and the educational goals of the student. Specific internship position descriptions are created for each opening and based on the center’s needs at that time.
Graduate Internships
Because most entry-level professional archivist positions require a graduate degree, together with archival coursework and a practicum working in an archive, one of the most important preservation endeavors the Briscoe Center’s staff engages in is training and mentoring the next generation of archivists through an internship at the Briscoe Center. These experiential learning opportunities provide employment for students that meet degree requirements, help develop professional skills, and provide an opportunity to gain vital experience in preparation for launching their career upon graduation. These same students go forth to work in other archives across the country and around the world, helping preserve history for all.
Undergraduate Internships
Working at the Briscoe Center introduces undergraduates to archival work as a potential career choice. Many undergraduates serve as pages in our reading room each semester, where they assist researchers with retrieving and returning material—gaining a foundational understanding of how archives operate in the process.
The Briscoe Center created an undergraduate internship in partnership with UT’s Plan II Honors program, which was designed to provide a broad, liberal, and challenging education for a limited number of students whose high school class standing and admission test scores indicate strong academic potential and motivation. Plan II students take courses in the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences along with degree specific electives, which provide considerable opportunities for individual research, writing, and speaking.
Since 2015, the Briscoe Center’s Plan II Internship offers an opportunity to introduce these high-performing undergraduate students to careers in archives, museums, and as historians early in their education. These students work alongside professional staff as research, archives, and exhibition assistants. The internship offers valuable work experience primarily focused on processing collections, preservation of collection material, assisting with exhibitions research and preparation, and working on enhancements to digital collection access.
Examples of internship opportunities at the Briscoe Center include but are not limited to:
Archival Enterprises Internships (Graduate and Recent Graduate)
A professional and focused experience in archival work structured around the processing and preservation of archival collections, cataloging, and archival descriptive practices and standards including EAD (Encoded Archival Description). Graduate interns work under the supervision and guidance of senior archivists. Some internships are limited to specific collecting strengths such as military history, Texas history, Archives of American Mathematics, American energy history, and university history.
Audiovisual Archives Internship (Graduate or Recent Graduate)
A professional and focused experience in collection management and processing tasks associated with archival sound and moving image materials found throughout the archives’ collections. Tasks may include digital reference copy production, surveying audiovisual media in new accessions, improving housing and storage, metadata maintenance and improvement, and arrangement and description of AV-rich archival collections. Interns may be trained in media inspection, handling, using obsolete playback equipment, archival arrangement and description, and software systems such as ArchivesSpace, audio and video digitization software, collection information systems used across institutions, and stand-alone media survey and assessment tools.
Curatorial Internships (Undergraduate, Graduate, or Recent Graduate)
Curatorial interns work closely with the Associate Director for Curation and the Registrar for Exhibits and Material Culture. Interns will gain hands-on experience in exhibit development and collections management. Projects may include work with diverse material culture collections, including processing, description, and object research. Interns may assist with exhibition development, object selection, and label writing, and support exhibition design, production, and installation. Interns may also assist with documenting exhibits through photography, video, and catalogs as per each project’s specifications and preparing accompanying educational materials as needed.
Digital Collections and Metadata Internships (Graduate or Recent Graduate)
Interns in digital collections and metadata projects support initiatives to digitize collections for public access and improve the discoverability of digitized items in the center’s digital collections. Interns learn to use the Phase One DT Versa digitization equipment and associated software. This internship provides opportunities to work with reparative description and item cataloging.
Digital Humanities Internships (Graduate and Recent Graduate)
Students and recent graduates work alongside the center’s professional archivists to research, curate, digitize, and create online portals for special projects focused on a particular collection or strength.
Pages (Undergraduate)
Students assist researchers and public service staff by locating, retrieving, and returning collection materials for use by patrons in the reading room.
Photography and photojournalism Internships (Advanced Undergraduate, Graduate, Recent Graduate)
Interns work directly with photography and photojournalism archives, where they are introduced to the practice of photographic archives management by assisting with the preservation and access of analog and digital materials. Interns expand their understanding of photography as historical evidence as they are exposed to moments of history captured by a photographer’s lens. The intern experience is further enhanced by opportunities to meet and talk with working professional photographers who visit the archive.
Plan II Internships (Undergraduate UT Austin Plan II students only)
An introductory archives experience designed for students enrolled in the university’s undergraduate Plan II program. Candidates are recommended by the director of Plan II.
Reference Interns (Graduate)
Assists reference staff in responding to public inquiries, including conducting research, and composing replies; preparing box lists for collections; and assisting with special projects. Interns work with the collection, staff, visiting researchers, and the public.
