Meet Intern Nicole Halpern

Nicole Halpern has recently joined the Libraries for a two-month internship. A sophomore at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, Halpern is working both with the Special Collections and Digital Services departments. Lilla Vekerdy and Kirsten van der Veen of the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology are spending the first month with Halpern. The focus for this month seeks to answer the questions, “Why digitize? What should be digitized? How do you digitize special collections?”  Vekerdy and van der Veen will teach Halpern about traditional book structures, paper making and book production. Halpern will also learn about the preservation of the Dibner rare book collection: handling instructions and conservation aspects of the materials. She will have access to a flatbed scanner to learn about simple digitization of the manuscript collection.

For the second month, Halpern will complete several special projects at the National Museum of Natural History, including digitizing with a high-tech digital camera. She will be instructed by Alvin Hutchinson and Martin Kalfatovic of the Digital Services department.

Originally from Tampa, FL, Halpern enjoys her studies at Dartmouth, where she can take a short walk to cross the border into Vermont. She is a modified physics major in an interdisciplinary program, enabling her to choose physics classes from several subject areas, such as history, literature and philosophy. Prior to this internship, Halpern had visited DC only once before on a 7th grade class trip, so she is looking forward to getting out and exploring the city. One of Halpern’s main goals while in DC is to discern whether or not library work is a possible career path for her. She is making it a priority to visit several libraries, including branches of the Smithsonian, the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Library of Congress, and interviewing staff at these locations. As Halpern notes, being an intern at the Smithsonian has its perks: she has scoped out a few of the many treasures at the Dibner Library, including early 20th century letters written by Warner Heisenberg and first-edition works of Galileo and Newton.—Liz O'Brien