Internships – UCLA Community Archives Lab

In 2018, UCLA’s Community Archives Lab, under the direction of PI Michelle Caswell, received a three-year $331,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to fund the “UCLA/Community Archives Internship Project.” The grant was renewed in 2021, and again in 2024 for another three years, this time under the direction of PI Thuy Vo Dang for $715,000 as part of the larger FOCAS initiative. This project continues to empower local community archives in Southern California to work with UCLA information studies graduate students to complete paid yearlong internships over the course of the next three years. Students are engaging in vital archival work documenting, appraising, describing, digitizing, and exhibiting community history, as needed by their host organization. Under the latest iteration of this grant, each community archives site is paid $11,000 for providing supervision to student interns. This project continues to be instrumental in helping preserve and make accessible the unknown histories of marginalized communities in Los Angeles, while at the same time increasing the capacity of community archives and providing MLIS students with paid opportunities to gain practical skills, including cultural competency.