Graduate Student Internships at EPA and NIEHS

The Library

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) is one of the twenty-seven Institutes and Centers of the National Institutes of Health -- a component of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The mission of NIEHS is to reduce the burden of human illness and dysfunction from environmental causes by understanding how environmental factors, individual susceptibility, and age affect human health and disease as well as how each of these elements interrelate. Current research at the Institute focuses on health disparities and hazards to the poor, women's health, lead poisoning in children, Alzheimers and other neurologic disorders, alternatives to animal testing, biomarkers, toxicogenomics, agricultural pollution, birth and developmental defects, sterility, breast and testicular cancer.

The award-winning NIEHS Library serves primarily the 1,000 scientists and administrators at the Institute. The library's collection includes approximately 25,000 books and 500 current periodical subscriptions. Electronic access is available to about 300 of the library's titles, in addition to the hundreds of other titles available through the National Institutes of Health's Clinical Center Library.

The Rotations

The serials intern is responsible for the daily management of the print serials collection, which involves the receipt, physical preparation, routing, shelving, and claiming of all currently received print serials. The intern uses the Serials Management Module in the library's integrated library system, Horizon, to create and maintain subscription, copy, routing, prediction and summary holdings records. The intern informs library staff of changes affecting any titles within the serials collection and is responsible for maintaining communication with the library's subscription vendor in the reporting and resolution of any claimed issues or other subscription related problems. The intern also assists in periodic deletion of materials according to the library's retention policies and prepares duplicate materials for donation to a variety of clearinghouses or other libraries.

Reference interns handle incoming patron requests posed both in person and via telephone, fax, or email. Familiarity with biomedical and toxicological resources is gained through day-to-day reference work. Additionally, reference interns routinely perform searches in databases such as Toxnet, Medline, ISI's Web of Science, and STN on behalf of NIEHS investigators. NIEHS reference interns are also responsible for updates to the library's Web site.

The cataloging intern is responsible for the creation of cataloging and classification records, as well as the physical processing of new monographic materials for the library's circulating and reference collections. The intern uses both the cataloging module of the library's integrated library system, Horizon, and the bibliographic utility, OCLC, to create, download, and maintain bibliographic and holdings records in MARC format. The intern also maintains the Authority File records associated with names, subjects and uniform titles, in accordance with Library of Congress practice. The intern assists in tasks associated with pre-order searching and bibliographic verification of titles to be procured for the collections, maintenance of the new books shelving area, processing of gift materials, reclassification, de-selection, and general database maintenance of the online catalog.