> >> >I know this is long, but has anyone heard of low-paid or unpaid internships >> >leading to bigger and better things/ For example, a friend of mine suffered >> >low wages for a summer internship on a battleship, and now he's a curator at >> >a maritime museum in Maine. Aren't contacts part of the point of an >> >internship? While I did not start at my current institution as an intern I did start as a volunteer in the Archives and I eventually became Archival Assistant, Functions Coordinator, Office Assistant, Assistant Curator, and now Director of Education. Through an earlier internship at the Baltimore City Archives I got no less than 3 temporary (FT and PT) gigs in the history field while still and undergraduate. Unpaid interns at our site have gone onto registrar, curatorial, exhibit design, PR, here and at other institutions. One is currently Assistant Director of this place. Over half of the memebrs of the Educators Roundtable of the Baltimore HIstory Alliance (21 Bmore museums, from the large to the one person opertations) started as interns at their sight. On my part time staff I have five people who were once interns either here or at other institutions and all of them are currently in school, except for one who just got accepted in the the GW internship program. We currently host only unpaid interns (two current interns have TA-ships fomr their school so technically you might say they aregetting paid, or at least are not paying for the internship) but we offer to work with them on a schedule that includes internship work and part time docent work which does pay. We do offer paid internships when we get a grant that had one or more put into the budget, but as these grants get smaller, interns are the first budget item to go. I would love to offer a stipend to potential interns, but this can't be a priority when we are fighting for funds to pay the salaries of registrars and curators. Training interns is a secondary or even tertiary mission for most museums Yes unpaid internships are a temporary burden on all of our wallets, yes working your way up through the ranks is hard work and goes "only to the go-getters" as someone on this thread said earlier, but we all knew this going into the profession didn't we? Did you really believe the admissions counselors hype when you signed into your program? Didn't you research the profession before you got into it. I am not saying this is the best way to run professional training, I too would like to have had a paid internship, and I would like to offer them now to others. To listen to my more veteran colleaques, there are more paid internships now than ever before in the Museum profession. I don't know if this is true or not, but I do know that entry level positions are drying up and becoming more competitive (just pay attetnion to this list, the topic comes up about every month so). Given that, a daunting internship and/or training process may not be such a bad idea. (If a very unpopular one) Matthew A. White Director of Education Baltimore Museum of Industry 1415 Key Highway Baltimore, MD 21230 (410)727-4808 [log in to unmask]