Library Seeks Applicants for the 2022 Junior Fellows Program

The Library of Congress is seeking applicants for its next Junior Fellows Summer Internship Program, which will run from May 23, 2022, to July 29, 2022. This 10-week paid internship is open to undergraduate and graduate students interested in learning and conducting research at the largest library in the world. For the third year in a row, the internship will be conducted virtually. The deadline to apply is Monday, Nov. 8, 2021. 

Press Contact: Deanna McCray-James (202) 707-9322, demc@loc.gov
Public Contact: Junior Fellows Summer Internship Program, juniorfellows@loc.gov
Website: Junior Fellows Program

For three decades, students have completed projects that explore Library collections and make collections more accessible. The 2022 Junior Fellows program is supported by an investment from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Of the People: Widening the Path is a multiyear initiative to connect more deeply with Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and communities of color by expanding collections, using technology to enable storytelling, and offering more internship and fellowship opportunities. Of the People: Widening the Path creates new opportunities for more people to engage with the Library, thus allowing the Library to share a more inclusive American story. The Junior Fellows portion of the initiative funds paid internships and fellowships to benefit from the wisdom of students, engage the next generation of diverse librarians, and create a range of digital engagements to connect with underserved communities and institutions.

This year’s Junior Fellows Program projects show strong alignment to the new Library initiative. These projects include cultural, scientific and digital projects that enhance access and engagement with the collections such as: Mapping the Stories: The Legacy of Daniel A.P. Murray; Allillanchu! Andean Stories; Mapping Historical Demographics: Race and Inequality; Online Exhibit Curation: American Archive of Public Broadcasting; and Content Development: Library of Congress Youth Center.

All of the proposed projects provide invaluable opportunities for interns to engage with the Library’s resources, interpret collections and share their findings with audiences through a wide variety of virtual channels. The Library anticipates hiring 46 interns for 27 projects. The project names for are listed below. For full project descriptions and a list of required skills and knowledge for each project, applicants must review the information at: https://www.loc.gov/item/internships/junior-fellows-program/ prior to applying.  Questions about the program or projects may be sent to juniorfellows@loc.gov.

  1. Content Development: Library of Congress Youth Center (Office of the Librarian/Informal Learning Office)
    This project supports development of a new experiential learning space in the Library of Congress. Project tasks include content support for interactives, work with content specialist liaisons to identify collections, and research on informal learning practices including benchmarking studies of similar programs at cultural institutions.
  1. Literary Program Development (Office of the Librarian/Literary Initiatives Office)
    This project will focus on developing and managing content for the Library’s National Book Festival. The Junior Fellow will write and edit author biographies, gather and organize content for the festival’s digital presence, and create and manage descriptive content for author presentations and literary ambassadors.
  1. Connecting Educators with Powerful Primary Sources (Office of the Librarian/Professional Learning and Outreach Initiatives Office)
    This project focuses on the development of an educational resource highlighting items from the historical collections of the Library of Congress related to civic engagement and social change. It will also support teacher professional development and student exploration related to those collections.
  1. The National Book Festival (Office of the Librarian/Signature Programs Office)
    The purpose of the project is to create documentation and collateral for the Library of Congress National Book Festival to enhance the attendee experience, while focusing on Library operations and understanding Library users.
  1. Mapping the Stories: The Legacy of Daniel A.P. Murray (Office of Communications)
    This project focuses on researching and interpreting the history of Daniel A.P. Murray and his historical relevance to the Library’s efforts in telling the stories of African-American contributions.
  1. Supreme Court Justice Project (Congressional Research Service/American Law Division)
    This project will augment the Congressional Research Service’s ongoing effort to modernize the Constitution Annotated. The Junior Fellow(s) will prepare biographies of selected Supreme Court Justices and brainstorm how to make the Constitution more accessible to college students by using the Library’s digital materials to enhance constitution.congress.gov.
  1. Enhancing Access: Creative Digital Projects (Office of the Chief Information Officer/Digital Strategy Directorate)
    This project will involve the creative reuse and remixing of digital materials from the Library of Congress toward the creation of new digital exhibits, publications or works of art that center the lives, experiences and perspectives of communities of color.
  1. Enhancing Access: Libraries, Archives, Museums (Office of the Chief Information Officer/Digital Strategy Directorate)
    This project will involve the creative reuse of digital materials from the Library of Congress to support the needs of a local library, archive, museum or community archive.
  1. Enhancing Access: Higher Education (Office of the Chief Information Officer/Digital Strategy Directorate)
    This project will involve the creative reuse and remixing of digital materials from the Library of Congress to extend coursework or to create new learning tools in support of the program’s mission.
  1. Effective User Research at the Library of Congress (Office of the Chief Information Officer/IT/Design)
    Effective user research continues to be an important activity at the Library to better understand our user communities and our employees. The Junior Fellow will engage with Library staff to understand the current landscape for products and services, conduct best practices research and build a framework for applying user research throughout the Library.
  1. IT Project Management Office Execution Roadmap (Office of the Chief Information Officer/ Project Management Office)
    The Junior Fellow will coordinate and collaborate with the Office of the Chief Information Officer, Library-wide directorates and divisions to ensure quality and compliance of set guidelines within the agency’s digital environment. The Junior Fellow will be involved in tracking findings and reviewing and maintaining an execution roadmap, project schedule and an internal website.
  1. Ensuring Access to Rights Restricted Digital Collections (Library Services/Digital Collection Management & Services Division)
    Stacks, the Library’s platform for accessing rights-restricted content, has allowed Library staff to provide secure onsite access to a variety of digital formats. The Junior Fellow will help to enhance discoverability and accessibility of the digital content in Stacks by conducting systematic reviews, downloading any missing titles, compiling required metadata, and ensuring completeness of digital collections in Stacks for users.
  1. Strategic Planning and Updates for Digital File Formats (Library Services/Digital Collection Management & Services Division)
    The Junior Fellow will use the Sustainability of Digital Formats resource to help collate and update information on specific file formats, conduct original technical research, expand a user research model and assist with longer range strategic planning.
  1. Hispanic Americans in Business (Library Services/Science Technology and Business Division)
    The Hispanic Americans in Business project will use the Library’s online collections and resources to develop content that aids researchers with discovery and access to the Library’s collections. The Junior Fellow will focus on identifying content for a research guide and blog posts related to Hispanic Americans in business.
  1. Allillanchu! Andean Stories at the Library of Congress (Library Services/Latin American, Caribbean and European Division)
    This project will surface collections that represent the rich and vast cultural heritage of the United States in connection to the Latin American countries. The Junior Fellow will conduct research to create storytelling projects to expand indigenous study engagement with the collections at the Library of Congress.
  1. Manuscript Division Reference and Resources (Library Services/ Manuscript Reading Room)
    This project involves helping researchers access the division’s collections electronically by responding to reference inquiries; analyzing reference requests; investigating sources of information; and drafting, revising and delivering responses. The Junior Fellow will gain an introductory knowledge of the principles, concepts and techniques of archival management and reference.
  1. Genealogy Outreach and Engagement (Library Services/Main Reading Room)
    The Library contains resources for diverse users to research their genealogy. This project connects a wide range of users with the tools and resources needed to explore genealogy at the Library, where collections hold stories of everyday lives and places.
  1. Mapping the Historical Demographics: Race and Inequality (Geography and Map Division)
    This project will uncover and delve deeply into old Census maps, maps produced by researchers and by other cartographers in the US, from 1800 to the present, which show the historical demographics of race and economic inequality in the U.S. The Junior Fellow will collect and present documents in a web mapping application available as a group for the public.
  1. Carvalho Monteiro Collection (LS-Preservation/Collections Management Division)
    The Carvalho Monteiro Library, created by Brazilian-born Portuguese businessman Antonio Augusto Carvalho Monteiro, is the backbone of the Hispanic Collection. The Junior Fellow will find, review and identify items in the collection and create a detailed list of those items, as well as updating the ILS records to give access to researchers worldwide.
  1. Preservation: External Climate and Internal Microclimates (Library Services/Preservation, Research and Testing Division)
    The Junior Fellow will undertake an analysis of historical D.C.-area weather data to review how weather patterns affect the interior microclimates of old buildings. The Junior Fellow will report predictive data that would assist smaller under-resourced cultural heritage institutions with older buildings, uncontrolled storage or climate-susceptible locations.
  1. Winning Hearts and Minds Malay and Indonesian Titles (Library Services/ Asian Division)
    The Junior Fellow will assist in making the Franklin Book Program collection more accessible to the public by processing and inventorying Malay and Indonesian titles and researching preexisting records to help the Overseas Operation Jakarta office create records in the future.
  1. Uncovering Poetry in African Languages (African Section of the African & Middle Eastern Reading Room)
    The Junior Fellow will help the African Section of the African & Middle Eastern Reading Room with surveying the large collections of poetry published in indigenous African languages. The Junior Fellow will use electronic resources to inventory the various sources in which African language poetry is found in Library collections.
  1. Diving into Our Digital Ephemera: Enhancing Web Archives Access (Library Services/Digital Collection Management & Services Division)
    The Junior Fellow will conduct research to enhance description of the web archives to help increase the accessibility and discoverability of the Library’s collections. The project is collections-oriented as the Junior Fellow will select from thematic and event web archives, based on their area of interest, and work to increase engagement with web archives.
  1. Online Exhibit Curation: American Archive of Public Broadcasting (National Audio Visual Conservation Center)
    The Junior Fellow will curate a new exhibit for the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) website on a topic of current and enduring concern, such as public broadcasting’s coverage of poverty in American communities, health care, rural America, policing or science-related topics.
  1. Metadata Enhancement and Remediation (Law Library)
    This project will revise and enhance metadata for the Law Library of Congress’ blog, In Custodia Legis, with the goal of enhancing accessibility and discoverability.
  1. Collections Access: Leading Blind and Visually Impaired Musicians (National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled)
    This project puts a spotlight on blind composers and musicians who are leading the music scene today and in history and provides information about music materials of, by, about and for blind musicians available in the National Library Service collection.
  1. Copyright for Kids (US Copyright Office)
    The Junior Fellow will support the U.S. Copyright Office’s strategic plan goal “Copyright for All” to reach out to diverse and varied audiences, groups and ages.

The Library of Congress is an equal-opportunity employer. Women, minorities and persons with disabilities who meet eligibility requirements are strongly encouraged to apply.

The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States — and extensive materials from around the world — both on-site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. Explore collections, reference services and other programs and plan a visit at loc.gov; access the official site for U.S. federal legislative information at congress.gov; and register creative works of authorship at copyright.gov.