Research Intern, Perkins School for the Blind, Watertown, MA

Posted January 11, 2018

Description

The Perkins Research Library provides library and research support to a wide range of patrons. About half our questions come from Perkins staff, but the others come from K-12 students, their teachers, academics, practitioners, and people who are blind, both in the United States, and around the world. We have a small staff (one Research Librarian, one assistant shared with the Archives) so the Research Library is also a great place to see and participate all the tasks needed to keep a library running.

 

The range of questions we get means we have a wide range of possible projects, depending on the intern’s particular interests. It’s also possible to combine a few different options, or to vary the tasks below with other common library duties (shelving, collection evaluation, assistance with reference questions, etc.) My goal is to make sure you have at least one project you can talk about in future interviews that you significantly contributed to. 

Some possibilities include:

• Recataloging our (small) juvenile collection to make it more useful.
• Reviewing our non-circulating collection, including removing duplicates, shelf-reading, and moving some items to better long-term locations.
• Creation of handouts, pathfinders, or resource guides about specific topics. (Individuals associated with Perkins, Perkins history, blindness education, multiple disabilities are just some possible topics.)
• Adaptation of materials for specific age groups (i.e. adapting a packet of existing materials for grade school students)
• Creation and review of help documents for common library and catalog tasks.
• Entering reference material into our internal FAQ for future questions.

 

Some projects involve working in our stacks: they are accessible by stairs only. If this is an issue for you, please let us know so we can figure out suitable solutions.

 

Qualifications

Most importantly, we are looking for people who are willing and able to treat everyone on campus with appropriate respect and politeness. We’ll provide information about appropriate etiquette when interacting with people who are blind or visually impaired, and are glad to answer questions about what the best practices are. We’re particularly interested to people who are curious about Perkins and the history of blindness education or disability history, but existing knowledge about Perkins, blindness, disability studies, or special education is not necessary. Beyond the requirements for the internship (credits and completion of the core courses), competency in technology will be very helpful. Tools you may need to use include various Google Apps (especially Google Sheets), Excel, Word, and email. We use InMagic as a catalog database: ability to learn a new program and knowing when to ask questions before changing data are important skills if you are interested in any task that involves the back end of the database. Because Perkins is a school, all interns will need to complete a CORI check (provided by Perkins) and provide evidence of vaccinations (similar to what you’ve provided to Simmons when admitted.)

Submit a letter of interest and resume to Jennifer Arnott at [email protected]