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Interns/Volunteers, Somerville MA

Filed under GSLIS Jobs and Opportunities
Posted by GSLIS, August 21, 2007
View all posts for August 2007

Library Interns/Volunteers Needed

Political Research Associates (PRA) is an independent, nonprofit research center that analyzes and monitors the political Right and other oppressive movements, institutions, and trends. PRA is based on progressive values, and is committed to advancing an open, democratic, and pluralistic society. It provides accurate, incisive research and analysis to activists, journalists, educators, policy makers, and the public and large.

Our office is located at 1310 Broadway in Somerville, Mass., not far from the Davis Square metro station.

Library
PRA maintains an extensive free specialized library of primary and secondary materials that is open to the public by advanced reservation.

The collection contains over one half million items, including roughly 6,000 books and reports, 1,121 sample serials, 120 archived serials, and 480,000 documents on antidemocratic, authoritarian, and other oppressive movements and forces in the United States. Our vertical files contain direct mail appeals, clippings, pamphlets, and flyers. In addition there are hundreds of videotapes and audiotapes with the equipment for viewing and listening by individuals or small study groups. Some of our serials run in full sets back to the early 1980s.

PRA strives to adhere to the rigorous standards of social science research and we use the library to inform and fact-check our own work. PRA staff regularly access the files to answer information inquiries, and visiting researchers hunt down important documentation which is often not available elsewhere.

Those we have hosted include community activists researching hate crimes; labor activists investigating anti-union campaigns; students looking into anti-democratic movements and trends; researchers and writers needing to fact-check and strengthen their work; and legal professionals preparing for civil rights and civil liberties cases.

Intern/Volunteer Project
At present, only about 1/3 of our 4,000 some odd book titles has been properly cataloged and labeled. Our current priority is to finish this catalog project and put the entire collection online (www.publiceye.org), searchable by topic, primary or secondary status, author, and year of publication. We have developed a manual for cataloging volumes based on PRA’s custom taxonomy. The interns/volunteers will work under the guidance of our Senior Analyst. We estimate that cataloging our remaining 2,000 volumes will require on the order of 120 hours, including orientation to PRA’s system. Completion of this project will make our collection more accessible to the public and PRA research staff alike, with the end result of providing stronger support for social justice research and organizing in Boston, the U.S., and beyond.

Interested parties should contact Amy Lessler at 617.666.5300 x23 or a.lessler@publiceye.org.