I have begun to work even more depth with creating the EDUC Resources page and I love it! Creating activities and thinking about what we should/could include within a webpage for educators is so much fun. I have become more intimate with some information I never learned in school; such as the shift from making toys from metal in WWII to wood and types of plastic. I have also been working on several scripts for our Prelude event which houses several living historians. Creating these scripts forces me to get outside of the normal parameters of the tour script and make it more intimate and first person story telling. I have never done anything like this before, making it a learning curve, but I am optimistic. I also helped lead a school night for 21st century grant school Moneta Elementary where I gave these students the induction exam that a soldier would have had to take back in 1943. I am having a blast all while working on my communication skills while also forcing me to be creative and inventive with my activity designs.
Internships Blog
Salem Museum Post 3
I finished making the signs for the Courthouse Portraits this week. This included cutting them down, gluing them on foam board, cutting the foam board, and finally putting up the finished signs. My least favorite step was cutting the foam board, I was given the a lot of freedom when it came to the design and layout of the signs; this freedom included deciding if I wanted to use foam board backing. In the end I did use the foam board because the signs looked better on it than they did just stuck to the wall alone. This was an annoying process because I was terrible at cutting the foam board out and had to reprint, re-cut and re-glue six of the signs on to the foam board and then re-cut the foam board. But after my second attempt I was finally ready to hang all of the signs up. Hanging the sings was the best and most rewarding part of this entire process, I used sticky tack to attach the signs to the wall and got to chose where the signs were put. The best part was fitting the signs between the two portraits pictured. Because of the closeness of the two portraits I was not left with much room to place the signs at a level that would be pleasing to viewers. Putting the signs in between the portraits worked out better than I previously thought when I was planning out the sign layout before I printed the signs.
Salem Museum Post 2: Never Ending Signs
For the past few weeks I have been working on making new signs for the Courthouse pictures hanging in the third floor stair way. This has been a learning experience, the process has thus far included doing a lot of research on the 1910 Roanoke County Courthouse (which is now our campus’ West build) and the people in the portraits that were commissioned for it’s opening. After my research was complete and fact checked by one of the directors, Fran, I began typing up short bios on the men and a brief introduction of the 1910 Courthouse. This is where most of my struggles began, for when making sign for a museum is not like writing a research paper. You have to pick information that describes the subject enough for viewers to be able to understand its relevance, while at the same time not putting too much information which may bore them. After more checks from Fran I was finally able to design what the signs would look like, this was a process in it self but was fun to put my own spin on the layout of the signs.
Pictured below is a rough draft of one of my designs, it is not very flashy but I didn’t want to put too much and distract viewers from the actual exhibit. In the future the signs will have a cream colored background. And once they get the final okay from Fran I will begin the final process of hanging up the signs!
Several Weeks In…The D Day Memorial
Welp! Several more weeks down and I have begun working on skills associated with creating activities for students at the memorial. We have a lot of educational programs here at D Day and I was brought on to work on these events/field trips so it is REALLY neat to be working on this material. Triangulating SOL assessment, school criteria, and content has been really entertaining and insightful. Some activities are really fun to do, like create cardboard tanks and reenact a battle, but are impractical from a curriculum standpoint. Knowing when to bring out the purely ‘fun’ activities is becoming increasingly easier. I have also been working on giving the tour of the monument; which has been loads of fun. Getting to engage with the monument every single day is a dream and I learn something new each day and with each tour. Knowing what to include within your tour and what to leave out is essential to a good tour. I have been on some tours that are two and a half hours…for your information the tours are only supposed to be between fifty minutes and an hour long. I could have received college credit for some of those tours! Recently we have been working hard on the World War II in Film conference occurring this summer at Liberty University and figuring out what we want included for the scholarship program. I had the idea to have the teachers submit a children’s guide of the museum that was engaging and encompassed the ‘grown-up’ tour. I don’t necessarily agree with my supervisor on every educational decision but I have learned a lot from her. She is extremely creative and easily communicable which helps move the day along and keep the activities interesting. Kids need to be engaged in order to learn so creating activities that engage them, teach them, and meet the standards of the state is more than difficult yet somehow she does it! Of course she has help from other educators and museum educators alike but it is neat to see the close-knit community between museums and educational systems. My internship project is creating an Education Resources Database that includes lesson plans by criteria of the SOL standards. Teachers and museums will be able to simply click on a desired SOL standard and see all these activities that align with it. Ahh well back to the grind!! Until next time.
Roanoke Valley Preservation Foundation Post #2
These past few weeks I have been given the task of editing the contacts list of the Foundation. Throughout the list I have editing the web address of individual groups that may have changed throughout the past years. Another aspect that I have changed is the mailing address for each organization. This will hopefully make it much easier for the mailing of the newsletter as well as create an opportunity to mail invitations. Lastly I would also like to add on any history related organizations that are new in the Roanoke Valley. All in all this contacts list is being compiled into an Excel Spreadsheet, with this I will lay out all contacts to where they are far more accessible for anyone to use.
This activity has been one that I have been able to mostly do from my laptop, however I will say there has been many different documents that I have had to refer to. From past contact list to previous award recipients, there is many separate groups within the Valley that I have had to consider. The skills that I have learned from this activity would have to be along the lines of organization and research. Not only am I trying to compile a large amount of contacts into one document, but I am also having to research if there are any changes in the organization’s email, website, mailing address, and phone number.
Historical Society of Western Virginia Post Two
In the past three weeks I have been busy taking care of various tasks, most of which I forgot to photograph to illustrate this blog. The picture above is of a case in which there are 3 record books that contain financial information and are currently a part of our banking exhibit that opened on the 3rd of February. This exhibit also contains the banks that I was working on in previous weeks.
Last week I was working exclusively in Collections with artifacts. I spent all of Tuesday and Thursday matching information to object, packing, and adding information to a spreadsheet.
Today, I worked on organizing large maps and blueprints that we have on loan in order for them to be returned to their owner(s). They had to be handled very gently and organized in a specific order. It was interesting to skim over maps regarding hospital, residential, and businesses. I have also been given my main project for this internship, which will be to look through our FIC (Found In Collection) items and matching them to items within our records.
Department after Department
In the past two weeks, I have been working in departments outside of the Youth Services area, and it has given me a new appreciation for all that happens in a public library, as well as how everything works together. On Mondays during the month of February, I spend my mornings in the depths of the library with Tech Services and the catalogers. I met with the head of the department, Lisa, who gave me insight into what goes on behind the scenes. One of the most telling things about the job is that, while I was there, there was nothing to do. The library has had their budget slashed and so there are rarely new acquisitions for her to catalog. We sat talking for three hours about all of the odd jobs that she does in addition to cataloging, such as being the director of a foundation that works with those with special needs. The director of the city library system called while I was there and I got to see how people interact, as though the library is a big family.
In addition to Youth Services and Tech Services, I have had the opportunity to sit in on two Saturday classes in the Virginia Room, the archive of the library. The first Saturday of this month was a class on Finding Elusive Women, and the crowded room was given several pages of helpful tools and a lecture on how best to use databases to find women in history. The class is centered on genealogy, so Wendy Allen, the archivist, used the examples of her own family tree to show how she has traced her lineage back several generations. The second Saturday was a class on how to use the census and its variations to track genealogy. I was not aware of how complex it could be and all of the different subsets that exist. It was interesting to learn and both classes had at least a dozen attendees with their own stories to tell and challenges to share. Sitting in on the classes gave me a new appreciation for the types of services that a library can provide outside of just providing books and internet access.
Roanoke Valley Preservation Foundation Post #1
For this semester, I have been given the opportunity to work with the Roanoke Valley Preservation Foundation. This group works throughout the Valley in many different ways, however their main focuses are centered around education, special preservation projects, and public policy. All of which are to promote the preservation of historic, natural, and cultural resources of the Roanoke Valley. For my internship I plan to help in the aspects of promotion and advertising, but I will also be working on an article for their newsletter as well as creating a list of contacts that will create a better relationship between the RVPF and other historical groups
throughout the Roanoke Valley. As for one the first task that I have been able to help out with was the Rosenwald documentary showing. This film showing was open to the public and was held at the Dumas Center in Downtown Roanoke, I was able to help with the running and clean up of the event but it was a great experience because I was able to meet many different contacts within the RVPF and other historical groups. This event helped me with my communication skills as well as organizational skills as I had to not only help with the check in process but also with donations to the foundation.
The event itself went very well and the documentary was so interesting. Although I myself had never heard of Mr. Rosenwald before or the many philanthropic activities he carried out, I am looking forward to learning more about this amazing individual and his great outlook on life.
All together I am very excited about this internship and the many opportunities it will present. I think that this internship will help me better understand what I would like to do after graduation as well as grant me a plethora of new skills.
New Semester, New Internship
This semester, I have the pleasure of interning with the Roanoke City Public Library system in the youth services department. The first two weeks have been full of adventures and learning a lot in a short span of time, and it has been more fun with each passing day. I have learned the basics of the complicated system the library uses and I have done some of the simpler tasks such as checking books in and out, and getting patrons logged onto the computers. In addition, I have begun one of two pretty large tasks that I will continue chipping away at. I am weeding the juvenile section of books that haven’t been circulated in the past two years, and then my supervisor and I sit down and see if the books should be kept, sent to a branch, or recycled.
While I am mostly at the main branch of the library in the center of the city, I have gone to help fill in at a branch with my supervisor. It is a very different experience from working at the branch, and I look forward to continuing to go to branches and learn the ropes there. I have also had the pleasure of filling in for Star City Reads volunteers, and I have been going to local schools to read to young children in the mornings. There are always plenty of things to be done in a public library system, and so far I have enjoyed it all!
First Salem Museum Post
My first full week of interning at the museum was mind opening; I would like to work in a museum after I graduate so I was really excited to find that I truly do enjoy the occupation. My first day I was asked to go threw each exhibit and take notes on what I liked and what I would change. And after I was done I was asked about my opinions, this made me think about how exhibits should be set up and how important having a good flow to the room was. You want to make sure that people go around and look at the exhibit in the right way so people will understand what you were trying to put across when you put it together.
My second day consisted of more of behind the scenes work, I spent most of my day in the archives looking through folders of old newspapers, books, and articles and was taught about accessioning items for the museum. One of the things I found most interesting was the book about female diseases written in the in the 1820’s. I also was shown how to wrap each item in a specific type of paper and how to box them up and then where to the item after it it was wrapped up. I was also taught how to use past perfect and spent the majority of my third day putting the items in the system.