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Library Collections Assistant Internship
Part-Time Hybrid Internship
$425/week
September 21 – December 18, 2026
Desired Majors and Areas of Study: Library Science, Library Studies, and Information Management
The National Museum of African American History & Culture (NMAAHC) Library is a research library devoted to collecting and providing access to resources that support scholarship in African American history, culture, and the African Diaspora. The Library also supports research in genealogy and family history. It features a reading room, public computer stations, scanner, stack space for 11,000 volumes, electronic and print resources, and an exhibit case. The NMAAHC Library is one of 21 branches that comprises the larger Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.
The library’s primary mission is to provide support for the research, exhibition, and programmatic endeavors of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). It does this by collecting, preserving, and providing access to resources and scholarship in the subjects of African American history and culture. The broader mission is to assist in supporting the scholarly needs of the Smithsonian Institution (SI) as a whole, as well as the independent research community who also utilize the library’s resources and services.
Library Collections Assistant Intern primary role will be to assist the NMAAHC librarian in evaluating books acquired through donation and gifts, to determine their suitability for the NMAAHC Library collection, or another SI Library based on a given criterion. The intern will also assist in evaluating an existing collection to help determine whether to deaccession or transfer to another SI library location. This work will entail searching the Smithsonian’s online catalog, SIRIS, and at times, the global cooperative catalog, WorldCat, and possibly other bibliographic tools such as book dealers’ websites as well as the web in general. This work supports the library in its mission of increasing the library’s collection with materials that support the research needs of the museum. The head librarian will further evaluate the materials for compatibility to the goals and overall mission of the library. This internship requires the ability to commute. The work will take place in the NMAAHC Library, and at times in the Research Library Annex (SLRA), the Smithsonian’s library branch at Pennsy.
The intern will learn or deepen their understanding of bibliographic data and how it relates to collections management. By working in tandem with the library staff, the intern will gain insight into library collections development, collections evaluation, and collections-based research in a research library. The intern will also gain insight into assisting researchers in the library.
Duties Include (but are not limited to):
- Searching library holdings in SIRIS and other US libraries for similar titles, checking for duplicate materials within libraries at Smithsonian, and if appropriate, notating the condition of the materials under evaluation.
- Working with the librarians on the preparation of the books selected for the NMAAHC Library, or those that will be offered to other SI libraries, or those designated for the bookseller, or deaccessioned.
- Assisting researchers in the library with their resource needs.
- Assisting with the selection of books to be purchased during the fiscal year.
