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!
