Digital Archives Internship
Scope of position:
The Button Museum is looking for students to work with us to develop and expand our Digital Archive. Students will gain unique and specialized experience researching, describing, digitizing, and cataloging our growing collection of historic pin-back buttons.
About the Button Museum:
Joel and Christen Carter, co-curators of the Button Museum and avid collectors of historically significant buttons, founded the museum in 2010. The mission of the Button Museum is to show as much as American history as possible through pin-back buttons. Buttons seem like a very niche item but they cover a vast amount of history large as small. Buttons show an intimate view of how people commemorate noteworthy times in their lives by creating and collecting these wearable mementos. The Button Museum houses over 50,000 buttons that range from an original 1789 George Washington pre-button to buttons produced this year. The Button Museum is an institutional member of both the American Alliance of Museums and Illinois Association of Museums and is housed in the Busy Beaver Button Co.’s facilities.
Major responsibilities (remote interns):
* Perform historical research
* Describe and catalog buttons
* Input data and research into museum database (Drupal)
* Opportunities with social media
* Opportunities working with metadata and photographs of artifacts
* Opportunities to work with the physical archive (Chicago-based interns only)
Minimum qualifications:
* Strong research and writing skills with attention to detail
* Strong organizational skills
* Interest in buttons, ephemera, history, art, museums, or similar subject
Preferred qualifications:
* Pursuing a degree in Library Science, Archives, Public History, Museum Studies or a related field
* Experience working with Photoshop to edit images
* Experience with Drupal Content Management System
* Experience cataloging museum objects
Hours required: 5-20 hours a week. Internship can be done remotely.
For Universities:
Students will be reviewed weekly and receive feedback as things are turned in. Students are encouraged to choose between 2-5 goals to accomplish during their internship and we work with each student individually to follow a plan for those goals. We will work with any school for individual guidelines or review schedules so students can complete this course for credit, if applicable.