Digital Internships Program
The Digital Internships Program is open to graduate students wishing to collaborate with librarians working in digital scholarship on campus. Students are recruited through a competitive process and successful applicants will receive a stipend and hands-on experience working in one of the opportunities listed below.
Applications are closed for 2024–2025 positions. If you are interested in being alerted when applications open for 2025–2026 (July 2025), please fill out our interest form. Updates about when applications open for 2025–2026 will be shared through email with those who fill out the interest form as well as past program applicants.
Digital Learning and 3D Printing Intern
The intern will work closely with the Digital Learning and Emerging Technologies Specialist to support the digital learning and 3D printing programs. On a bi-weekly schedule, the intern will execute 3D prints, coordinate print pickups, maintain 3D printers as needed, and blog recent 3D prints on the CUL 3D print blog. The intern will also support open workshops organized by the Digital Learning Specialist on a variety of topics including 3D printing, qualitative coding, and privacy. Experience with 3D printing tools such as Tinkercad and FlashPrint, and with hardware tools and engineering (i.e. RaspberryPi, Pine64, Arduino) are strongly preferred. The intern will be expected to adapt to needs as they arise and should have a dedicated interest in exploring digital tools, troubleshooting, as well as working in a collaborative environment. The intern can expect 8-10 hours of work per week.
Digital Music Intern
The intern works to broaden engagement with tools for digital music, musicology, music notation, and audio, in partnership with the Music Librarian and aligned with the Digital Music Lab. This may include designing and teaching/co-teaching workshops and tutorials, participating in virtual lab hours, and related individual project work. Typical scheduling is 8-10 hours/week.
Digital Publishing Intern
This intern works closely with the Scholarly Communication Technologies Librarian and the Digital Repository Manager. The intern works primarily on the journals program and also assists with tasks related to our podcasts program as needed. Trained to be fluent in our open-source journal publishing platform software (Open Journal Systems), the intern will primarily be asked to assist with projects related to reporting, workflow, and documentation. Some possible projects that this intern may assist with in the 2024-2025 year include:
- An assessment of journal editor needs including our journals publishing partners and other Columbia University journals
- Creating documentation (written and video) for users using our journal publishing platform
- Drafting and editing of annual reports for publishing partners (R, Quarto, HTML and CSS)
- Gathering resources for podcast publishing partners and other podcast creators into a web guide (HTML and CSS)
- Co-teaching workshops related to scholarly publishing and/or open scholarship
Repository Metadata Intern
This intern works closely with the Scholarly Communication Technologies Librarian and the Digital Repository Manager. The intern works primarily with Academic Commons, the Columbia University digital repository. The intern in this position will have the opportunity to learn about metadata standards and best practices for preserving and making accessible digital scholarly objects as well as programmatic solutions for data wrangling, data cleansing and data interoperability. The intern will be asked to support the day-to-day cataloging needs associated with the database and have the opportunity to contribute to new and existing workflows for creating, enhancing, and remediating metadata records. Attention to detail is essential, as are strong written communication skills. Some possible projects that this intern may assist with in the 2024-2025 year include:
- Processing bulk deposits into Academic Commons (Zotero, Google Sheets, Python/Pandas)
- Testing bulk deposit workflows and refining processes (Python/Pandas)
- Reviewing and improving workflow documentation
Program Objectives
- To foster a community of scholars interested in emerging forms and methods of research and scholarship.
- To expose the next generation of faculty and researchers to rich and innovative digital tools, methods and environments that will be useful in their future work and will improve their competitiveness in the academic marketplace.
- To create an opportunity for graduate students to develop useful skills and practices to be shared with library staff and other users, and through this interaction drive the creation of innovative research- and teaching-support models within the library.
- To present alternative career paths for those holding advanced degrees, specifically as professional-level collaborators in digital scholarship based within and outside of academic departments.
- To engage students with the everyday professional practices of librarians in digital scholarship and provide experience with the operations of academic libraries, especially as they contribute to the educational goals of universities and impact teaching, learning, and research.
- To harness student expertise in technology and applied science to help the broader Columbia community to build skills around topics such as Python, R, publishing and podcasting technologies, and music technologies.
Mentoring
Each participant will be assigned to a mentor who will train the student and prepare a work plan for the project. The Libraries is committed to fostering a work environment where interns are respected and feel free to ask questions and make suggestions.
The program is open to all Columbia University graduate students. Participants must be enrolled as a student for the full academic year, from September through May.
Participants are expected to make regular contributions to the Digital Internship blog.
Interns will be paid $20.00 an hour and will work five to ten hours a week (or the semester equivalent thereof) during the academic year.
If you'd like to be informed about future internship opportunities, please fill out our interest form. Applications for 2025–2026 will reopen in July 2025, and those who have filled out the interest form will receive an email letting them know that applications are open.
Intern supervisors may collectively be reached at digital-internships@library.columbia.edu for questions that are specific to individual positions. Do not contact this email address to ask when applications will be available, but instead fill out the interest form.