Vanessa Dotson

As I wrap things up here, I would like to say that this was a wonderful experience that gave me so much that I can take into the future with me. I hope to carry the skills I gained with me after graduation as I transition into my new life outside of school. I was given opportunities to learn new things every day, and it was extremely enlightening and fulfilling to do work in the field I hope to enter.

In the end, I would highly recommend it to anyone doing a history internship in the future. If you like archival work and getting hands-on with history, this is the place for you.

It’s cool because of fun stuff happening, and it’s crunchy because of leaves on the ground

I have been doing a lot of stuff over the past couple of weeks as I am trying to get my hands on anything I can before the internship comes to an end. Something unexpected happened right before fall break, though – I got to start working on my own exhibit!

A display case near the entrance was cleared for me, and I was given the task of putting together a small exhibit on holiday postcards. This involved everything from research to picking out the cards to creating labels to be put on the wall above the case. It has been such an awesome experience, and it was so fulfilling to see my days of work come together.

For my remaining time at the museum, I will finalize everything in my exhibit and make sure that I understand everything I want to about museum work.

November has been full of wonderful new experiences at my internship.

I have learned how to do a number of things from hanging a picture at proper eye-level to packing historic clothing for safe storage. Packing clothing has quickly become my favorite; I am very into fashion in general, so it is super cool to be able to see and handle some beautiful old pieces in the collection. Ranging from the 1880s to the 1980s, I was able to see a very wide range of clothing that allowed me to understand period styles as well as admire how clothes were put together across different decades.

My favorite piece from the clothing I packaged was a very pretty floral-patterned dress from the 1950s. Normally the 1980s would be more my style, but something about this dress was so pretty and light that I had to get a good picture of it to admire

I have been interning at the Historical Society of Western Virginia for about a month now, and I am definitely learning a lot of new things!

I began my time cataloging photographs from the Korean War into PastPerfect before moving on to transcribing letters that were sent over 100 years ago. The photographs gave me a lot of residual nostalgia for things that happened in the 1950s, and the letters really put my cursive reading ability to the test. Both types of objects let me see and somewhat feel the emotions of people at those time periods, so it has been a really enlightening experience.

Nowadays I have been promoted to cataloging three-dimensional objects like bottles and belt buckles. These get more complex due to the need to measure dimensions as well and take photos of the objects from every possible angle. Next, I will be learning how to archive clothing from the 1800s, and the fashionista within me is very excited

I was able to begin my internship at the Historical Society of Western Virginia just a few days ago, and I got to dive straight into some really interesting work. After I was shown how to use Past Perfect to update some photographs that had already been cataloged, I was handed a stack of recently donated photographs and given the opportunity to put them in from scratch. I input detailed descriptions for each photo and marked them with individual search terms so that people can locate them easier if they were to go onto the Historical Society’s website. What I enjoyed the most was doing condition reports; this entails holding the photograph up to the light and reporting any scratches, scuffs, or discolorations that could be seen with the naked eye. It made me feel like a bit of a detective

Overall, I had a very busy first couple of days, and I am excited to learn and experience more in the future!