Cataloging Intern, Cambridge Historical Commission, Cambridge, MA

Posted January 11, 2018

Description

The Cambridge Historical Commission is the historic preservation agency for the City of Cambridge. In addition to its regulatory responsibilities, the commission maintains a public archive and research library focusing on the city’s architectural and social history. Holdings include information on every Cambridge building, atlases, historic photographs, and biographical files on notable residents. The Commission’s full-time archivist organizes existing collections and new donations, and supervises assistant archivists, interns and volunteers.

 

The Spring 2018 Intern will work with the assistant archivist in cataloging the Commission research library using Library of Congress Classification and the TinyCat online cataloging program. The research library consists of approximately 1,200 volumes ranging in topic from Cambridge history to historic preservation law. An additional 400 volumes are located elsewhere in the Commission offices and will also need to be cataloged. Intern will assign call numbers, assist in rearranging the library by call number, and add items to the online catalog. Several volumes are very old and fragile and will require the construction of protective housings.

 

Depending on intern’s interests, additional projects may include:

• Digitization of the West Family Collection. This collection includes a photo album with numerous photographs dated from ca. 1920-1926. Intern will scan and prepare images to create an online exhibit through the Commission Flickr page.
• Assisting with research questions at the Commission.
• Processing plan and partial processing of the Ellis & Andrews Collection. This large collection contains business and personal correspondence relating to the Ellis & Andrews real estate firm dating from 1889 to 1986, with the bulk of materials dated 1890 to 1935. Currently the collection is arranged chronologically, however this arrangement is not useful to researchers. Intern will develop a plan for the arrangement of this collection and arrange one to two boxes based on this plan and write a blog post for the Commission blog about the process.

 

The Cambridge Historical Commission is open Monday from 8:30-8pm, Tuesday-Thursday from 8:30-5 pm, and Friday from 8:30-Noon.

Submit a letter of interest and resume to Emily Gonzales at [email protected]