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 fall 2025 positions. If you are interested in being alerted when applications open for spring 2026, please fill out our interest form. Updates about when applications open will be shared through email with those who fill out the interest form as well as past program applicants.
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.
Intern supervisors may collectively be reached at digital-internships@library.columbia.edu for questions that are specific to individual positions. Please do not contact this email address to provide additional application materials.