Lennox Foundation Preservation Internship

Since 2006, the Preservation Department has hosted a summer graduate intern in preservation administration, conservation, or digital initiatives. The Lennox Foundation Preservation Internship is an eight-week internship that provides our interns with an opportunity to apply the theory they have learned in school to real-world projects. This program was made possible by a generous grant from the Lennox Foundation that established the Lennox Foundation Preservation Education, Training and Outreach endowment. Each year, the endowment provides the funding for the internship, including a stipend, housing, travel to and from Ames, and professional development such as a conference or workshop.
In previous years, we have hosted one intern each summer. Our interns have come from a variety of programs and gone on to pursue their careers in preservation and conservation. Our past interns:

• 2006 Carie McGinnis from the University of Texas at Austin Kilgarlin Center, currently the preservation librarian at Harvard’s Houghton Library.
• 2007 Ilse Entlesberger from the University of Fine Arts in Vienna, currently the book conservator for the Regional Library of Upper Austria.
• 2008 Kathleen Fear from the University of Michigan School of Information, currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Michigan.
• 2009 Bexx Caswell from North Bennett Street School and Simmons College School of Library & Information Science, currently the Vail Conservation Technician at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries.

This year, we are fortunate to host two interns: Kristi Westberg from West Dean College Conservation Studies, and Henry Hebert (archived) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information & Library Science.  Kristi will be conducting a collection-wide survey on ISU Library Special Collections’ historical cookbook collection. Henry will be stabilizing ISU Library Special Collections’ Civil War diaries for digitization, and will perform any necessary conservation treatment after digitization is completed.  Both interns will also perform conservation treatments on the newly acquired Harvey collection of landscape architecture texts, in preparation for an exhibit in Fall 2010.  You’ll be hearing more from them soon as they dive into their projects.