How do we organize our histories, human knowledge and information in this digital age to make them ‘discoverable’?  The Digital Oral History Archivist (DOHA) Fellowship program, made possible with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS.gov), will introduce aspiring highschool students to contemporary techniques in digital archiving and collections care via hands-on experiences and lectures from subject-matter experts. Fellows will have the opportunity to organize, describe and preserve born-digital oral history artifacts as they arrive in The 1947 Partition Archive.

Currently enrolled highschool students across the United States interested in learning digital heritage preservation and archiving techniques are invited to apply. The six month long paid fellowship will especially be beneficial for students exploring a future career in digital archiving, digital heritage preservation or the library and information sciences fields in general. Students interested in gaining a deeper insight into South Asian histories will find additional benefit in this internship.

Students will attend a series of lectures delivered by experts in the field and gain hands-on experience in cloud-based cataloging, handling and preservation of born-digital oral history collections to be described in Stanford University Libraries’ Digital Repository for broad dissemination. Specifically, students will be handling digital oral history artifacts alongside professional archivists as they arrive in The 1947 Partition Archive. Students will also learn to identify nuances and evaluate ethical considerations when curating digital oral history interviews for dissemination on popular social media platforms for the public. Lectures will include topics on the history of techniques used by humans for preservation, on the library and information sciences field, on oral history in the digital age, ethical handling of sensitive collections, geo-tagging in politically evolving regions, among others. Students emerging from the program will have a solid practical basis from which to explore more advanced topics within the library and information science fields as well as the humanities in general. This is a remote, part time fellowship that will unfold alongside the student’s regular schoolwork from the comfort of home, although students will be required to attend a mandatory orientation in Berkeley, California at The 1947 Partition Archive’s headquarters. The orientation will include field trips to the University of California at Berkeley’s South and South-East Asia libraries, as well as the Stanford University Libraries. Fellows will receive a laptop (to be returned at the end of the fellowship) as well as a monthly stipend.