Digitizing Native American Languages for the Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous Languages (BoL) 2015
Project Description:
The National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, is offering a paid internship in its Digital Imaging Program during the spring and summer of 2015. The NAA operates one of the Smithsonian’s most successful imaging programs, having produced more than 300,000 high-resolution images of photographs and artwork from its collections.
This summer, The NAA will be a host site for the Breath of Life Archival Institute, one of Recovering Voices’ most prominent language revitalization initiatives, working in conjunction with the Library of Congress, The Myaamia Center at Miami University,
University of California-Berkeley, and the National Museum of the American Indian.
Breath of Life encompasses Recovering Voices’ mission in that it is designed to
promote active collaboration among people with a wide range of perspectives
about language and culture, including technical linguistic knowledge and cultural
expertise.
The institute involves learning from archival sources, with the collection of over 5,000 language manuscripts documenting hundreds of Native American languages being utilized. The NAA digital imaging lab will be digitizing pages of endangered language materials from their extensive holdings for inclusion in the programming and education of the participants. Many of these manuscripts present a complexity of imaging issues due to their fragility and nature of the hand-written word.
The digitization intern will work under the supervision of the Digital Imaging Manager, to address these issues of imaging, while gaining hands-on experience in the technical aspects of digital image creation (overhead digital camera capture) while learning about imaging standards, image data and its preservation and storage, technical and embedded metadata, digital asset management, and project management. Specific tasks include: digital camera capture; file processing; metadata creation; creation of multi-page PDFs; and digital asset management.
Qualifications:
Graduate students or recent graduates within 6 months of their graduation date in archives, libraries, imaging or museum studies programs who are interested in digital
technologies as applied to archival care and management of historical collections.
Deadline: February 16, 2015 Stipend: $2600.00 Start date: May 4, 2015
Project Timeline and Location:
The internship is located at the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution Museum Support Center (MSC), 4210 Silver Hill Road, Suitland, MD 20746. The internship is planned for 12 weeks, 3 days a week.
Please submit a cover letter describing your qualifications and interest, résumé and contact information for three references to Ivy Drexel at DrexelI(at)si.edu
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