Intern

The Lakeland Digital Archive Team and the City of College Park are seeking current or recent grad or undergrad students interested in working as part of a community/university collaborative Digital Humanities team to complete preliminary research and data preparation for an Augmented Reality (AR) tour of the historic community of Lakeland in College Park. The ideal candidate will be knowledgeable about and/or interested in learning about African American history in Prince George’s County Maryland from 1890-present. Interns should have knowledge of how to use Airtable, Notion, Otter-AI, OHMS (Oral History Metadata Synthesizer) and Google Products or a willingness to learn these programs (instruction can be provided). During this first phase of the project, interns will work with team members from the Lakeland Community Heritage Project (LCHP) and the City of College Park to review and select materials in the Lakeland Digital Archive--especially the oral history files--to be considered for use in the AR tour and to undertake selected new oral histories of Lakelanders as needed. Experience in oral histories is desirable but training can be provided.

The AR tour will cover roughly 30 sites of historical importance in Lakeland’s community boundaries prior to urban renewal in the 1970s and 80s. The work will involve reviewing materials already gathered for the Lakeland Digital Archive to select photographs, oral history soundbytes, maps, newspaper clippings, and other historical materials to help create and flesh out the AR tour sites. It might also include identifying sites for which additional research is recommended (for a different phase of the project). The work might break down somewhat as follows:

● Familiarizing oneself with the history of Lakeland (reading Lakeland: African Americans in College Park, 1890, and learning from various LDA materials)

● Reviewing photographs and print materials from the LDA (which will require learning how to work with the Airtable database that holds the metadata for the collection).

● Reviewing content of the nearly 100 oral histories in the LDA and creating content guides for them, pertinent to the sites on the future AR tour. (This will involve reading oral history transcripts generated by Otter AI--a smart transcription software, and, perhaps, also listening to the sound files in cases where the transcript is unclear. It may involve data cleaning to make the transcripts more legible. It will also involve using OHMS to create content guides/inventories of the transcripts where needed. This involves content marking with key words and notations of time point in the interview).

● Materials useful for the Lakeland AR tour will be added to our Notions site, a shared content management system, to make recommendations for elements to be included in the AR tour. These may be photographs, sound bytes, or narratives or other materials.

● There may also be writing of proposed Lakeland tour scripts or commentary (on Notion).

● Interacting frequently with members of the team to get guidance and feedback. Members of the team will decide on AR tour content, with input from interns. If additional oral histories are required, interns will be expected to

● Complete logistical arrangements, in consultation with team members, to set up interviews, which may be remote or in person. (If remote, the oral histories may be conducted using Zoom or a sound recording platform like Zencastr).

● Conduct the oral histories (conduct and record the interviews using questionnaires provided or developed for the specific informant). Interviews will be completed in teams of at least two individuals.

● Site visits may be required, Decisions about in person interaction will be based upon current policies of the City of College Park, Maryland and peoples’ perceptions of their own safety.