giscrimsher

Since my last post, I did not really work on anything new since my internship was coming to an end. Over the past two weeks I have continued to accession new items as well as update files for old collection items. But I enjoyed every minute that I spent working in the museum.

Throughout my internship I learned many new skills and gained valuable experience in a career field that I hope to someday be a part of. I learned how to use the PastPerfect system, how accession items, how number, re-number, and label those items as well. I learned how to problem solve issues with existing collection items, how to organize a storage space, and how to properly package and store artifacts. I learned a lot and got a lot done in the short time that I was at the Bowman Museum.

Along with the skills and valuable experience that I acquired during my internship, I also received tips

and advice for pursuing a career in the history field. I plan on using the advice that I received in the future to help me prepare for a career after I graduate.

Since my internship was specifically working with collections in a museum, I was able to get the number of items that I worked with or accessioned, and I think that is really cool. This allows me to be able to get an idea for how many items I handled and what I was able to accomplish during my internship.

I am very glad that I had the opportunity to be an intern at the Bowman Museum and to be a part of this program. I learned a lot this summer, and I really enjoyed my time working in the museum. Although I was only there for less than 3 months, I already miss it.

Some of the items I found while working at the museum. The first is a pocket knife shaped like a gun, the second is a war time record player that still works (I got to learn how to play records on it).

Over the past couple of weeks I have continued my usual accessioning work at the museum. I have also begun to work on a small project inside the museum. I have had a lot of fun so far interning at the Bowman Museum this summer and I hope to continue to learn more as my internship winds down.

I still find the work that I am doing to be very interesting and fun! As I am digging through forgotten boxes of collections items, I often come across interesting objects and occasionally these objects require some research or I get to play around with them and see how they work (or if they still work). The best example of this so far happened last week. Some volunteers and I found an old train set, which had a Caboose and an Engine modeled after a Prineville Railway train. So we spent 2 hours assembling the metal tracks and getting the train cars put together. However, we discovered that the Engine to the train (which had the transformer to make it run in it) was on display so we are still unsure if it still runs like it was made to. Nevertheless, it was a lot of fun getting to play around with the train set.

I definitely feel like I am making a contribution to the museum. I have contributed by working on boxes and projects that needed to be done, some were difficult, some were pretty easy.  Throughout the summer I have gotten a lot done in the museum and I have learned quite a bit about collections care and management in a museum. I have not only learned about the Bowman Museum, but I have also learned a little bit about museums across the country and I had a lot of fun doing it.

Since I have mostly finished going through old accession boxes, I have begun a new project. One of the collection storage spaces in the museum is oddly shaped and the storage process of items in this space was not originally planned out very well. So over the past week, and the continuing weeks, I have been working on re-organizing this space to make it a little more functional so that it will be easier to get objects out in the future. It is a long process since I am also working on re-labeling the boxes that I and moving and updating their locations in the files. Being able to evaluate and organize a collections storage space is an important skill to have when working with museum collections and I am glad that I have opportunity to learn this skill.

I am learning many skills that I will be able to apply to future jobs, and I hope that I might be able to apply these skills in the classroom as well. I have really enjoyed my internship so far and I will miss working the museum when my internship ends.

 

 

Photos of the train set, updating the labels on the boxes, and the space that I am reorganizing.

Over the past two weeks, I have continued to work with the saddle collection. I have also continued to work through updating existing collections records. Both are interesting tasks and I have been learning a lot about the care of artifacts.

Recently, I have been focusing on photographing each of the saddles in storage. Since the stands that support the saddles are difficult to move, I had to move each saddle to a temporary stand set up with a white back-drop. This was a long process since many of the saddles are in less than desirable condition and are heavy, making each one difficult to move.

I have also been working updating files on existing collections. Occasionally this task can get a little boring since a lot of the work is doing the same thing for each item (usually 30 plus items in each box). But I usually come across an item that I find particularly interesting, or and item that proves to be difficult and requires some problem solving to figure out why the item isn’t listed as it should be. Often times the latter issue leads to me tracing back the physical paper work to find the proper paperwork for the museum’s possession of the item. Sometimes this is pretty easy to find and means that I simply have to change some of the numbers on the item. However, occasionally I find an item that has little to no presence within the paper trail. These issues are like a puzzle and I kind of find it enjoyable to try and solve them, sometimes with the help of the Collection’s Manager, Sarah.

During these past two weeks, I also had the opportunity to sit in on a Collections meeting with Sarah and the Collections volunteers. The group went through potential donations and decided what will be accepted into the Museum’s Collections and what will not. Overall my internship is going well and I am enjoying the work that I am doing as an intern!

Photo of the photographing process for the saddle collection.

The past few weeks at the Bowman Museum have been fun and educational. I am enjoying my time as an intern and all of the work that I am doing at the Museum.

I have continued to learn more about how to store and label different artifacts that are donated to the museum. A couple of weeks ago I had to use foam blocks and a knife to carve a custom storage support for some objects and then I would glue them down inside of an archival box. This was a really interesting experience and solution to storing oddly shaped objects so that they could be seen immediately when the box is opened.

Along with cataloging new donations, I have also been updating existing collections. Usually this means searching the accession number in Past Perfect and filling in the missing data. However, some objects get more complicated. Some objects may have not been entered into Past Perfect or the accession number is being used for another object. The former case tends to be more easily solved than the latter. With these issues, I then have to use the paper records kept of all the paperwork before it can be entered into the system, unless the number is already in use, in which case things get a little more complicated.

Over the past couple of weeks I have also taken on a project. Since the Bowman Museum focuses largely on local history, much of the collection consists of objects from the Ranches in the area. This allows the museum to house a large saddle collection. Unfortunately the saddles are not in the best of shape and require some TLC. My project is to help create supports and padding for their storage racks from foam and to get the saddles properly cataloged with pictures of each saddle. The collection consists of a mix of Western saddles and Side-saddles. It is actually pretty cool being able to handle these saddles (some of which are over 100 years old) and to help care for them while I am at the museum.

Overall I am loving my work at the Bowman Museum and I look forward to the opportunities that I will have in the future during my internship!

The first two weeks of my internship at the Bowman Museum have been great! I have already learned a lot about the area, the Museum, and how the museum is ran. For my internship, I work with the Collections Manager, Sarah, and I have been learning about the process for cataloging new and current collections as well as the care for all of the different collections. Not only am I learning about how the Bowman Museum works, but I have also been learning how other museums in the area run and their connections to other museums.

My first day consisted of touring the museum, seeing the offsite storage, and the surrounding area. I also began learning the process for cataloging and caring for the new donations to the collections.

On the second day of my internship, I had the opportunity to travel with some of the museum staff to the Maryhill Museum in Washington. It was really cool to see the exhibits of this museum and to see how it differed from the Bowman Museum. We also got to talk with the Executive Director of the Maryhill Museum and learn how they use the surrounding land and other assets that the museum has to make money to maintain the collections. We were also lucky enough to get to see their archives and the collections stored there. It was interesting to see how other museums store their collections and how they care for them as well as see how it compares to what I am currently learning about during my internship.

Throughout the past couple of weeks, I have been mainly working with new collections and learning how to add them to the museum’s collections. At first I started with easy objects and Sarah walked me through the steps and helped me to designate accession numbers. Slowly, I have been learning about the different ways to attach accession numbers to collection objects depending on the materials on the objects. I have learned that sometimes this can be the longest process when cataloging new collections, but also one of the most important.

We spent one morning at the offsite storage  building and we started going through the objects that were there. We would use a sheet of paper to hand catalog the information and take pictures of each of the objects so that we could go back to the museum and try to update the files on these objects. However, the hard part about doing this is that many of the objects didn’t have accession numbers written on them, making it difficult to find an existing file. It is especially hard when the object out-dates the electronic system, meaning the only records for this object are on paper. This was pretty cool to see some of the stuff that is not stored at the museum and to figure out how to update their records.

Overall my internship is going well and I am enjoying my time at the Bowman Museum. I look forward to what I will be learning about in the coming weeks.