Five Oaks Museum is offering a paid internship for the Patricia Whiting grant project! Funded by the Oregon Heritage Commission, this internship will focus on the selection, description, and digitization of materials from the Pat Whiting collection. Whiting worked in Washington County as a community activist and legislator from the 1970s until her death in 2010 and achieved many firsts including progressive environmental legislation and being the first Filipino-American and first woman to serve in the Oregon House of Representatives. Help us preserve her legacy and provide access to these invaluable materials in our collection!

 

Five Oaks Museum is an independent non-profit located on the Portland Community College – Rock Creek Campus on Tualatin Kalapuya land in Washington County, Oregon. As a local organization engaged in globally-relevant dialogues, we support the thriving cultural ecologies around us through guest curated exhibitions, learning programs, events, research, and the museum’s cultural resources, archives and library. After 65 years of centering Euro-American settler narratives, the institution was fundamentally reshaped in 2019. It now operates as a platform for multi-vocal, culturally embedded stories and as a sandbox for innovative organizational structures, all shaped around the museum’s core values of Body, Land, Truth, Justice, and Community.

Serving as a key component to the Patricia Carpio Whiting grant project, this internship provides an opportunity to develop skills in research, selection, description, and digitization of museum objects, photographs, and archival documents for community access and future research using a decolonial, reparative framework.

Date

• Mid-late January 2025 through mid-April 2025

Compensation

• $20/hour, 10 hours per week
• 80 hours total

Position in Organization

Reports to: Lewyn Nelson, Cultural Resources Manager

Location: Five Oaks Museum – PCC Rock Creek Campus

• Learn about Patricia Carpio Whiting’s life and impact on Washington County, Oregon 
• Research and document curatorial decision-making and reparative description practices, including cataloging by other institutions, to inform the selection and description of the collection materials
• Select museum objects, manuscript materials, photographic prints, and scrapbooks for digitization
• Assist in the digitization of selected materials
• Create descriptions and subject terms for the selected items using a combination of national standards and local vocabularies
• Surface new terms to add to local vocabularies

Any combination of education, work experience, and lived experience that demonstrates your ability to thrive in this internship is welcomed.

• Ability to synthesize written and visual information into keywords and descriptions for search and retrieval of digitized materials
• Research skills demonstrable from education and/or work history
• Interest in and commitment to reparative practices in museum work
• Ability to work independently and meet deadlines
• Basic typing and computer skills
• Experience working in spreadsheets
• Ability to learn proper handling methods for fragile materials

• Experience working in museums, archives, or libraries
• Knowledge of cataloging, tagging, and/or metadata
• Interest in local politics, community activism, and/or environmental legislation

Access

Our workplace operates in English and uses Google Suite for shared documents. Five Oaks Museum is located on the Portland Community College – Rock Creek Campus, 17677 NW Springville Rd, Portland OR 97229. ADA parking and TriMet bus service are available to the museum. The museum building is accessible to ADA standards including entry ramp, power doors, and accessible restroom stalls. Physical workstations are designed for each individual’s needs and size-inclusive seating is present in meeting spaces; there are no stairs within the building. Disability justice is deeply within our values and enacting that beyond basic compliance is currently an area of focused growth for us.

We are committed to doing all that we can to support additional access needs throughout the interview process and within the position. To request accommodations, alternative formats of this application, or to contact us regarding issues with the application process, please call (503) 645-5353 or email info@fiveoaksmuseum.org.

Applications must include a minimum of (1) a letter of interest tailored to this position along with (2) a resume and/or CV, and (3) the completed supplemental activity to be considered. Email your application materials and any other supporting documentation showcasing your fit for this position to: lewyn@fiveoaksmuseum.org no later than 11:59pm PST on Saturday, November 30, 2024.

Interviews will be tentatively scheduled the first and second weeks of December 2024. 

 

Please choose ONE prompt from the supplemental activity and answer in a separate document (Word, Google docs, or pdf). Submit it with your resume and cover letter to lewyn@fiveoaksmuseum.org.

FiveOaks_InternshipActivity