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The next few visits that I have had at the museum have been more or less the same. I am learning more about the program Pastperfect and have gone through 7 folios of pictures and documents. All of the pictures and documents range from graduating classes of the police academy, pictures of new buildings in the Roanoke area, and also some illustrations. The other day I went through a few file boxes and refiled many pictures and documents. First I had to individually sort out each document then write the correct object id on the folder. I am excited to get back into the swing of things over break and see what other interesting tasks I will encounter.

Another project that we have been working on in the past few visits have been starting preparation for a medical exhibit on the Carillion Hospital located in downtown Roanoke. I have just started to realize all the work that goes into an exhibit before hand. My task for this project has to do with cataloging various pictures, items, and documents for the exhibit. I have been doing this in an Excel sheet. The areas that I am filling out have to do with the donor, a description, and correct identification number for the item. Once this was finished Ashely used the page for reference to all of the items that were going to go into the exhibit. The picture that I will include below is of the Excel sheet. In the next few visits I will be dealing with newly donated items and putting them into the system and assigning them identification and accession numbers.    

A few weeks ago, I started my history internship at the O Winston Link Museum in downtown Roanoke. I am working under the curator Ashely Webb. My first couple times going so far have been enjoyable and very interesting. Actually seeing how a museum works, and how much hard work actually goes into it, has been very interesting to me because hopefully I maybe will be doing something along the same lines. My first visit, came with lots of hanging of photographs that Winston Link took himself. I had no idea how much thought would actually go into hanging pictures for an exhibit. I was given many mathematical steps to make sure they were all at the correct height. In another visit, I went with Ashely to their collections building which is located in the Jefferson Center in downtown Roanoke. My task, with Ashely, was to help move and organize many different items that were acquired or given to the museums collection. There was everything from paintings, pictures, different types of clothing, and even old bicycles and statues. This opened my eyes to how big museums collections actually can be, and I could not even imagine what a large museum’s collection could be. My past few visits have been all about using and learning the program Pastperfect. This program is made for museums to organize, date, describe, and electronically store contents of the museum. While at first the program seemed very overwhelming, when I got the hang of it, it was a very satisfying feeling when I found all the information to plug into the program. Also, it made me feel like I was actually helping out the museum in a real way. My next visit will be next Tuesday and will most likely contain more work in Pastperfect. I am looking forward to helping out Ashely and the museum.