By Miriam Intrator, Head of Archives & Special Collections and Rare Book Librarian
Every fall and spring semester we welcome a new cohort of undergraduate interns to the Mahn Center. The internship is for-credit and open to any undergraduate student, from any department, who has completed their first year at Ohio University while maintaining at least a 3.0 GPA. These students gain real world experience doing research, organizing and describing collections, and supporting the curators in their work by doing everything from helping select items for digitization to contributing to digital and physical exhibits, among many other experiential learning opportunities. This semester three new interns will be working on specific projects within the Rare Book Collection. Let’s meet them!
Madison Timms
Madison Timms (they/them) is a senior working toward a BFA in Studio Art Printmaking with a Museum Studies Certificate, ’26. Madison will be adding much needed descriptive metadata to the Student Artist Book Collection, which was organized by spring 2025 intern Lindi Harden. This will greatly improve searching, discoverability, and access of the collection.
What most excites you about this internship:
I’m excited to learn more about what goes into Archives and Special Collections librarianship!
Why you selected the shelf of books in the picture:
The red-cloth binding of these books immediately caught my eye, and as I read the titles I became increasingly interested in learning more about the Left Book Club and its history. The symbolic use of color and minimalistic design is straight-forward and impactful, especially seeing them all grouped together on a shelf like this. The focus on leftist politics and anti-fascism in this collection is what really drew me in and feels particularly relevant today.
Anything else you want to share about yourself, your studies, interests, background, etc.:
I am an artist and aspiring cultural heritage institution professional from Lancaster, OH interested in preserving and making art and information more accessible!
Zach Bisselberg
Zach Bisselberg is a junior majoring in History and Classical Civilizations with a minor in Religious Studies, ’27. Zach will be completing processing, organizing, rehousing, and describing supplemental materials from the Gilbert and Ursula Farfel Collection of Incunable and Manuscript Leaves. He will be expanding on the work done by spring 2025 interns Zoe Duncan and Rachael Hebert.
What most excites you about this internship:
I am excited to really get to know the collection that I am working with and help to make it more accessible for everyone to enjoy.
Why you selected the shelf of books in the picture:
I selected this shelf because it had several beautiful copies of Plutarch’s Lives, which is a text that I worked with extensively for a recent research paper.
Anything else you want to share about yourself, your studies, interests, background, etc.:
I am particularly interested in Ancient History and Latin and Greek literature.
Avery Kumes
Avery Kumes is a Classics & Religious Studies HTC major with a minor in History, ’27. Avery will be working on research and organization of Pages from the Past: A Collection of Original Leaves from Rare Books and Manuscripts. Avery’s work will improve knowledge about Pages from the Past as well as about its creators, The Foliophiles Inc. or The Society of Foliophiles. Read about Maggie Bennink’s work on a different Foliophiles set as a student employee in Digital Initiatives.
What most excites you about this internship:
I am looking forward to working with the Pages from the Past collection, which contains some of the oldest holdings the Mahn Center has. There is a lot of provenance research and digital reconstruction to be done with these materials and I’m excited to contribute!
Why you selected the shelf of books in the picture:
My picture is in front of the juvenile literature collection. I have always been fascinated with the design side of book history, and this collection puts into perspective how much book design has changed just over the last century or so. I love the gold leaf included on so many of the 18th century books in this collection, and this is a humble beg to publishers to revive this trend!
Anything else you want to share about yourself, your studies, interests, background, etc.:
I had the pleasure of interning in the East Tennessee History Center’s archives last summer while I was home, and I worked through their collection of Civil War pension records filed by the 1st US Colored Heavy Artillery Unit, an entirely African-American unit stationed in Knoxville for about 3 years. I had a wonderful time transcribing these records and helping bring these stories to life, and I hope to do the same here!
Keep exploring:
Read more blog posts by previous interns and be on the lookout for announcements about when applications open. Closing dates are:
Internships for fall semester: due end of Friday before Spring Break.
Internships for spring semester: due end of first Friday of November.