Boston Public Library Internships: Opportunities for Growth and Development

Internships at the Boston Public Library (BPL) offer invaluable opportunities for individuals seeking to gain real-world experience, develop essential skills, and explore potential career paths within the library and information science field. These programs provide a unique blend of hands-on learning, mentorship, and exposure to the diverse facets of a major public library system.

The Value of Internships

An internship is an opportunity for folks to get real world experience by learning the knowledge and skills needed for a particular career. Internships are usually short-term (ie a few months or a semester) and focus on getting some on the job training and/or taking what’s learned in the classroom and applying it to the real world. Internships can be paid, unpaid, or can count for academic credit. Getting an internship allows you to gain industry knowledge and accumulate evidence of your abilities. Some industries require a proven track record to gain entry level access. Internships also help you make professional contacts.

Internship Opportunities at the Boston Public Library

The Boston Public Library provides a range of internship opportunities across its various departments and branches. These internships cater to diverse interests and skill sets, offering students and emerging professionals a chance to contribute to the library's mission of providing free and equitable access to information, knowledge, and culture.

Teen Services Internship

One notable internship program focuses on teen services, offering a robust experience for students from institutions such as the Simmons School of Library and Information Science. This internship exposes participants to numerous facets of the public library, with a specific focus on teen services. The internship program concurrently works with Simmons in being an internship site therefore offering credit for the participation by the interns. The internship experience focuses on that of observation in Teen Central and in the five teen serviced branches in the Boston Public Library system; East Boston, Grove Hall, Hyde Park, Mattapan and Roxbury and that of the professional duties of the Teen Librarians coupled with individual work focusing on the inner workings of a public library. The internship involves a minimum of 130 hours of field experience that represents an important learning experience for the student. As a 3-credit course, it has a significant hands-on learning component. Through discussion with key personnel in the organization and working under professional librarian supervision, the student gains hands-on experience in the information environment. Length of time: 14 weeks for the semester, 9 hours a week for a total of 130 hours. Interns gain practical experience by assisting teen librarians, developing programs, and engaging with young adults in the community.

The Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center Internship

The Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library is seeking a paid intern. The internship duties are divvied between 80% GIS projects, and 20% public service. This internship is funded by a grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), awarded to the Leventhal Map & Education Center in 2017 with the goal of opening digital access to a collection of historical urban atlases. These maps are at a scale of 1:600, and depict every property in historical Boston, including ownership information, street names, numbers, and more. Due to the density of information encoded in these materials, the historical urban atlases are one of the most heavily requested sources available at the Leventhal Map & Education Center. The intern will contribute to a web map interface for user discovery, and the creation of WMS tile links that can be integrated with other mapping APIs. Other responsibilities include the creation and maintenance of spatial metadata, ensuring project quality, writing and refining documentation, and communicating standards to the rest of the team. The intern will work between 20 and 25 hours a week. This project will result in the creation of cached tile imagery for each atlas, available for free as seamless, pannable and searchable mosaics of the city.

How to Find and Secure an Internship

Securing an internship, especially in a competitive field, requires proactive effort and strategic networking.

Networking

Let your network know. Who is in your network? Make a list of people you have a connection with like friends, family, and classmates..

Career Center

Check out the career center at your school. They may have an internal database of internships only accessible to students at your school.

Online Platforms

Utilize online platforms connecting both students seeking internships and companies. Students must create a profile to apply for postings.

Leveraging Library Resources for Career Development

The Boston Public Library itself offers valuable resources for individuals seeking to advance their careers.

Databases

You can use the libraries databases to keep on the trends in your industry. We have several databases that cater to niche audiences that you can access from the office with your library card and PIN. The Economist Historical Archive delivers a complete searchable copy of every issue of the Economist from 1843 to 2015. Finding the right career can be a daunting and high stakes task: finding an appropriate institution of learning, job searching, and maintaining a career are all topics covered by this collection, providing current and applicable content for all vocational milestones.

Read also: History of the BU Bridge

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