Call for Expressions of Interest
Community Archives Internship
A program of Endow Manitoba and the Association for Manitoba Archives.
The Association for Manitoba Archives (AMA) and Endow Manitoba seek applications from community heritage institutions to host a fully-funded archival studies internship in Summer 2025. Funding of $12,000 is available to pay the intern, while $3,000 is available to compensate the hosting organization or supervisor for supervisory and mentoring duties.
This is an opportunity for a community heritage institution to host a graduate student intern. It is necessary for your organization to have an employee (part time or full time) with responsibility for records or archives, who can mentor and supervise the day-to-day work of the intern, who will be a master’s student from the archives stream of the University of Manitoba/University of Winnipeg Joint Master’s Program in History. At the end of the internship, the intern and supervisor will submit brief reports on their experience.
Internships are often the first opportunity that an archival studies student has to do records work. An appropriate program of work should offer tasks that are typical of an entry-level professional position. There should be enough variety to allow experience in several areas of professional records work.
Appropriate tasks include:
● Researching and compiling archival descriptions; posting them to the Manitoba Archival Information Network (MAIN) and/or to institutional databases or websites (this can include managing bulk uploads to MAIN using CSV files/Excel); creating and revising research guides, finding aids and other tools for research and discovery.
● Providing reference services either in person, by phone or online, by email or on social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter.
● Public programming to raise the profile of your heritage institution. This can include developing and running events in your physical space; creating or further developing online content such as the archives website, online exhibitions or collections pages; developing and maintaining social media presence and/or events.
● Appraisal work including appraisal or re-appraisal of new or existing collections or backlogs; the implementation of past appraisal decisions while processing.
● Preservation work such as basic assessment of risks to records and risk mitigation; and physically preparing records for long-term storage and access, such as re-housing records for better long-term support.
● Digital preservation work including surveying legacy media such as floppy disks and compact disks; extracting records from legacy media; planning for future digital preservation work; writing digital preservation policies.
● Records management work such as creating file classifications and retention schedules; drafting policies around institutional record keeping and disposition; locating and surveying existing institutional records.
Internships typically last 12 full-time weeks, defined as 37.5 hours per week. Internships are an important part of the archival studies curriculum, as they provide experiential knowledge of professional records work.
How to Participate
If your institution is interested in hosting an internship, you are invited to submit a statement of interest to the AMA.
You are asked to describe:
● Your institution’s capacity to provide on-site mentorship and supervision of the intern. Be sure to describe the current role and experience of the on-site supervisor, and how they would support the intern.
● Your plan for mentoring the intern.
● Your proposed program of work for a 12 week internship. It should allow the student to experience a variety of professional records work over the course of your internship.
● The physical setting in which the student intern would do their work. Please include photos of the work space.
If your community heritage institution is located outside of Winnipeg, you should additionally provide information about how the student might find accommodations during the internship.
The internship should take place between May 1, 2025 and August 31, 2025.
Expressions of Interest are due by Monday, February 24, 2025. The committee may seek additional information as they review the submissions.
Questions and expressions of interest can be sent to the Association for Manitoba Archives at: ama1@mts.net
