CERL Internship and Placement Grant 2015

2015 INTERNSHIPS OFFERED BY MEMBER LIBRARIES

Interns are invited to select one of the projects proposed by CERL’s member libraries or to present an alternative proposal.

THE HAGUE, KONINKLIJKE BIBLIOTHEEK
The Koninklijke Bibliotheek would like to offer two CERL internship opportunities:

Short-Title Catalogue Netherlands

The Short-Title Catalogue Netherlands is the national bibliography of Dutch books printed between 1450 and 1800. At the moment the STCN includes more than 200.000 titles, all described book-in-hand, and to this day, unique copies are still found. The intern shall search for unique Dutch titles in collections that are not described in STCN yet (e.g. archives and small specialized libraries in the Netherlands) or in foreign collections, via library catalogues or digitized collections such as the Swiss collection of digitized early printed editions e-rara. CERL will benefit because STCN-titles will eventually be inserted in the Heritage of the Printed Book database.

Online Library Catalogue

All early printed editions of the KB have been described in our online library catalogue, but some have slipped through. The intern shall search for uncatalogued early editions in the KB and catalogue these for the library catalogue and – if needed – in the Short-Title Catalogue Netherlands.

LONDON, THE BRITISH LIBRARY
The British Library would like to offer two CERL internship opportunities, both working within the Printed Heritage Collections team:

Horace Walpole’s Library: Adding Provenance Data to British Library Catalogue Records

Working closely with Hazen’s “Catalogue of Horace Walpole’s Library” (London, 1969) we would like the librarian or scholar to identify all of the Strawberry Hill books (and possibly manuscripts) that are now in the British Library collections with the aim of creating a finding aid. The collection of Horace Walpole (1717-1797) was wide and varied, so the work will entail working with items printed across Europe and in different formats. We envisage the intern finding the books in our catalogue, calling them up and describing condition, binding, any/all Walpole identifiers, annotations etc. This will prove really useful for curators and Walpole researchers in the future.

Cataloguing 19th Century Printed Items Contained within the Lord Chamberlain’s Plays Collection

A significant number of printed items are located throughout the Lord Chamberlain’s Plays collection (playscripts, 1737-1968). Many of the items are unique having, in some cases, been printed for the purpose of submission to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. This project entails examining 19th century playscripts in order to identify printed items, record annotations, match them to existing catalogue records, or provide the necessary information to create new catalogue records. The benefits are considerable – greater visibility of the printed items would increase the use of this under-used collection and provide a greater understanding of the British Library’s printed theatrical holdings.

MUNICH, BAYERISCHE STAATSBIBLIOTHEK
The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek would like to offer one CERL internship opportunity, working within the Special Collections Department:

Recording links to watermarks of incunabula in ISTC. The BSB and the University Library of Leipzig have recorded watermarks of c. 500 incunabula in WZIS, see e.g. Wasserzeichen Informationssystem. The records cannot be linked to ISTC automatically, as the WZIS URLs are based on the shelfmarks rather than catalogue numbers, so they have to be entered manually.

LONDON, THE WELLCOME INSTITUTE LIBRARY
The Wellcome Library would like to offer three CERL internship opportunities, working within the Special Collections Department:

1) Cataloguing incunabula in Material Evidence in Incunabula;
2) Catalogue enhancement for the records of a proportion of our 16th-century early printed books;
3) Catalogue enhancement of medieval manuscripts

OXFORD, THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY

The Bodleian Library would like to offer one CERL internship opportunity, working within the Special Collections Department, and under the supervision of Dr Irene Ceccherini, Lyell-Bodleian Research Fellow in Manuscript Studies:

The Library preserves the working papers, mostly unpublished, of Professor Albinia de la Mare († 2001), who devoted her research life to the study of humanistic script. An internship is offered to work on the card indexes of Renaissance manuscripts, scribes, and illuminators, in order to be transferred into electronic format to be more easily accessible to scholars. The index would then be uploaded to the CERL Thesaurus to increment records on manuscript production, and to support links with the CERL Portal.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE

The applicant should send one A4 letter of application stating preferences of destination, preferences of research projects, or collections to work on, and the name of one referee who can be contacted by CERL. In addition, the applicant should send one curriculum vitae of no more than 2 pages, including information about areas of expertise and languages. If the applicant is employed by an institution, the consent of the institution should be included.

Deadline: 15 September 2015

CONDITIONS

This grant can only be assigned once to the same person. Applicants who were not selected but positively vetted will be notified and are welcome to apply for the next round.

A written report for the CERL webpage and Newsletter, and/or a presentation in person will be expected at the end of the internship/placement.

Address: Consortium of European Research Libraries, Finsbury Business Centre, 40 Bowling Green Lane, London EC1R 0NE, UK or e-mail: secretariat@cerl.org.