Internship Programs in Digital Publishing

Are you seeking a chance to get hands-on experience utilizing digital publishing? 

Partnering with the Department of English, the Scholarly Communications: Publishing - Digital Publishing provides an internship opportunity in digital publishing every semester to undergraduate students. This partnership has been in effect since Spring Semester of 2020.

Our first internship student was Rachael Carver. 

Working with the Internship Coordinator at the Department of English, Dr. Timothy Ponce, we created an internship program for Rachael which would meet her interests and needs.

Rachael’s internship program included: To learn,

•  How the library OA publishing unit (including Mavs Open Press) works
•  Publishing works, such as:
  • DOI/ISSN assignment procedure
  • Formatting process, using InDesign
  • Ensure accessibility
  • Publishing tool -  OJS (Open Journal Systems)
  • Checking author right/permissions for the faculty papers in UTA ResearchCommons, using SHERPA/ROMEO 
  • Publisher Open Access policies 

Rachael also learned how to create a portfolio which would integrate her activities with the internship program in the digital Publishing unit - UTA Libraries.

Rachael successfully completed her internship program and she is currently working for us as a library student assistant. 

Her first contribution to our OA publishing projects was formatting work for our new OA journal, “Global Insight: A Journal of Critical Human Science and Culture.” The first issue of this journal was published on October 1st, 2020. She participated in the actual workflow for the OA journal project and applied her experience and skills acquired from her internship program. 

Rachael said,

“My internship was a fantastic educational opportunity, and I’m grateful to Kelly, Yumi, and Brittany for enabling me to gain hands-on experience I need for my future career. I learned so many aspects of digital publishing that I didn’t know before, from the practical side – such as publishing programs like InDesign and platforms like OJS, to the more philosophical side – such as the ethos of the Open Access movement. In addition, the Spring 2020 semester was upended like the rest of the world, but all of the UTA Libraries’ staff and leadership made me feel supported and valued during that tumultuous time. For the entire duration of my internship and current work as a student assistant, Yumi and Brittany have both been very approachable, and they have encouraged me and provided me multiple opportunities to grow my knowledge and skills. Brittany especially has put up with a million and one questions, and I’m so thankful for her advice and guidance.”

Our internship programs are designed to offer hands-on experience in digital publishing, which cannot be obtained in a classroom setting. Also, our internship programs can be customized, depending on the students interests and needs. 

This Fall semester, in addition to the internship student from the Department of English, we have another internship student who is from Disability Studies. As he expressed his interests, the internship student from Disability Studies is currently working on interview materials from the Texas Disability History Collection. He has gained the skills to use the oral history interview tool, OHMS (Oral History Metadata Synchronizer), which can enhance search and discovery of information in interview videos by connecting textual searches of a synchronized transcript or of an index. With his efforts, part of the interview materials from the Texas Disability History Collection will be published online. 

Do you want to know more about our internship programs in digital publishing?  Email Yumi Ohira, Digital Publishing & Repository Librarian at yumi.ohira@uta.edu