Volunteering & Internships
Volunteering
Volunteers help with special projects in the building and the collections. Join our volunteer roster by letting us know your interests and abilities. Recently volunteers have helped prepare mailings and database entries, put up shelves, and staffed events.
Like all publicly supported 501(c)3 non-profit organizations we are governed by a volunteer board of directors who donate time, talent, and financial support to the organization. We try to ensure that our board represents the various communities of interest throughout our northern New England region. For more details about volunteering please contact David S. Weiss, Interim Executive Director.
NHF Board of Directors Meeting
Like all publicly supported 501(c)3 non-profit organizations we are governed by a volunteer board of directors who donate time, talent, and financial support to the organization. We try to ensure that our board represents the various communities of interest throughout our northern New England region. For more details about volunteering please contact David S. Weiss, Interim Executive Director.
Internships
An internship at Northeast Historic Film provides the opportunity to build on existing archival skills through specific projects related to the collections. Internships are intensive and require extreme attention to detail and the ability to work independently.
A background in museum or archival studies, a strong work ethic and attention to detail are all essential. Basic film knowledge and a background in motion picture film preservation are also required in order to work with the motion picture collections.
Internships generally take two forms: short-term assignments requiring a minimum of 30 hours a week, or on-going placements which require one day per week over the course of a semester or more. Internships are unpaid.
Interns have come from the New York University Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program, the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the University of Maine, among others.
An internship will generally focus on one of the areas listed below, and will center on a specific project related to the material in that area. Other duties may also be assigned.
Moving Image Collections
An internship working with the film and video collection will entail film collection management and maintenance. Basic film inspection and cataloging skills are required along with a background in film preservation and film handling. Tasks may involve collection inspections, recanning collections, conducting vault inventories, labeling cans, film transfers, and data entry.
Ephemera and Technology Collection
A project in this area will typically involve conducting inventories of the periodical and/or ephemera holdings, cataloging holdings of amateur filmmaking equipment, providing item-level collection descriptions and updating database records.
Photograph Collection
Projects will typically involve identifying, cataloging and inventorying photographs, and updating database records with descriptive information. Additional projects may involve scanning and rehousing photographic materials.
Intern Application Procedure
Be certain to describe an area of interest and goals of internship. Send a cover letter and resumé to David S. Weiss, Interim Executive Director.
Kimberly Tarr, New York University, Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program graduate
“While serving as a graduate student intern at NHF during the summer of 2008 I was first introduced to the Adelaide Pearson Collection. One of my charges over the course of that summer was to select archival gems to screen before features, a staple in the Alamo Theatre known as the Archival Moment. While searching for a clip one week, I stumbled upon a 16mm color film featuring Mahatma Gandhi. David Weiss, NHF Executive Director, mentioned that the Pearson clip might very well be the first known color footage of Gandhi.
Former NHF Collections Manager Gemma Perretta and Kim Tarr at the Orphans 6 Symposium in New York
My interest was immediately piqued: who was this woman who traveled the world in the first three decades of the twentieth century documenting her adventures and how ever did she gain access to modern India’s founder?
With access to her personal papers – journals, scrapbooks, and other ephemera – as well as the nearly 8,000 feet of 16mm film held at NHF, I learned as much as I could about the life and work of this largely unknown amateur filmmaker. Working with my colleagues at NHF, we applied for – and received – a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation to preserve 800 feet of Pearson’s films. My research culminated in a Master’s thesis at New York University and I was delighted to share my findings at the 2009 NHF Summer Symposium in a presentation entitled “‘Round the World and Back Again: An Examination of the Production and Exhibition of the Adelaide Pearson Film Collection.” The newly preserved Pearson films will debut in April at the Orphans Symposium, where I look forward to sharing the life and work of Adelaide Pearson.”
