Fall 2014 Digital History Internship Opportunities

Envisioning History, an educational non-profit, has Fall Semester internship opportunities for undergraduates to process digital historical data into an advanced geospatial database.  The subject of the historical material is World War II; the interns’ work product will help populate a database with documents, media files, events, people, organizations, tactical and strategic government decisions, etc.  The database—which essentially works like Google Earth with a time dimension—will soon be available for undergraduate and graduate level historical research.   

Envisioning History works with universities to allow interns to obtain academic credit for their work, where the university allows this.  Usually 50 hours of internship work equals 1 credit hour, or more typically 150 hours of internship work equals 3 credit hours. In order to obtain credit, formal arrangements must be made with the university before the internship begins.  Envisioning History has standard formats for making these arrangements with Universities; prospective interns have the responsibility to put us in touch with the appropriate Professor or Department Head to formalize these arrangements.

Nature of the Work:

• Interns will process digitized primary source documents from World War II, will plot geo-coordinates of events and will cross-tag the documents with the associated events, ships, military units, people, etc.
• Training in use of the software (currently in wide use by the U.S. and other NATO military and intelligence organizations) will be provided.
• Work can be done from any location with a reasonably fast internet connection.
• Working with Envisioning History and their sponsoring Professors at the beginning of the term, Interns will set weekly progress goals and Envisioning History will send a summary progress report to the sponsor.
• Students may be given a choice of areas of WWII history to work with, such as the Central Pacific Campaign (Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, etc.), the US return to the Philippines, The Battle of the Bulge, the Eastern Front, etc.  Students with a particular interest should make that clear when applying, although we cannot guarantee all choices.  There will be some outside reading required to familiarize you with the assigned subject area

For video demonstrations of the database, see http://www.envisioninghistory.org/demos.html.

For queries from faculty and for further information, please see our web site at www.envisioninghistory.org/internship-announcements.html

Richard Ector Envisioning History, Inc. 1 Kimber Ridge Ct. Annapolis, MD 21403 Phone: 423-240-1050 Email: rick.ector@envisioninghistory.org Visit the website at http://www.envisioninghistory.org/internship-announcements.html