Latin American Studies Collection Development Internship
Columbia University Libraries, Fall 2018
Are you currently enrolled in an MLIS program? Are you interested in collaborative collection
development initiatives? Do you know Spanish and/or Portuguese at a working level? The Global Studies
unit at Columbia University Libraries is seeking a Fall semester intern to work on several regional and
national collaborative collection development projects related to Latin American Library collections. The
internship could be renewed for subsequent semesters depending on the projects undertaken and intern
interest.
The intern will work with the 2CUL Latin American & Iberian Studies Librarian (Columbia/Cornell) to
evaluate, analyze, and write up findings and recommendations for several collection development projects
related to Latin America. Projects will be determined with intern interest and professional development
goals in mind:
Analyze duplicate print journal holdings at Cornell and Columbia Universities.
Compare electronic primary sources at Cornell and Columbia including analysis of usage
statistics, local discovery, and marketing strategies for usage to various communities at both
universities.
Retrospective collection development of monographs related to contemporary art in the
Caribbean.
Analyze and follow-up on the results for the Latin Americanist Research Resources Project
Distributed Resources Project survey.
Review of collection development policies at both institutions.
Mapping of various regional and national collaborative collection development projects.
Impact of local treatments of Latin American studies collections on a consortium and within
shared print collection environments.
Internships are unpaid and *must* be taken for credit through your school. Interns are asked to commit
for at least 10 hours per week within Monday – Friday during normal business hours. There is a
possibility to do most of this work remotely but these will all be collaborative projects between the
supervising librarian and the intern and continuous feedback, shared editing of documents and progress
reports are expected.
To be considered send a resume and a brief letter of interest noting which of the outlined projects interest
you and why this internship could further your professional goals to Sócrates Silva at
ss5000@columbia.edu
