After a training course, docents may also make visits to schools to present introductory art lessons for students and to local nursing homes and senior centers to present slide lectures on works in the collection. The museum's Research and Scholars Center guides pre- and postdoctoral fellows in the use of resources for original research in American art and culture. Fellowships are awarded through an annual competition administered by the Smithsonian's Offie of Fellowships and Grants. Other types of appointments, with and without stipends, also are available to visiting scholars. Internships The museum's intern program offers opportunities for college-level students to experience firsthand the various responsibilities and duties of museum professionals.
Internships are available during the summer, as well as for the fall and spring terms.
The museum's library, shared with the National Portrait Gallery, specializes in American art, history, and biography and contains more than 100,000 volumes. Auction catalogs, serials, scrapbooks and microforms are also included in the holdings of the library, which is open to adults with research projects or inquiries. A major project begun in 1971 to inventory all American paintings created before 1914, in both public and private collections throughout the United States, established the museum's leadership in utilizing automated information for the development of art-historical research. Twenty-five years later, the museum's computer inventories listed more than 300,000 paintings and sculptures by American artists, the largest such informational source in the world. Complementing these records are more than 270,000 photographic images documenting American art and artists.