The first few weeks of my internship with the museum have been a fast-paced learning experience. I had no experience with any curatorial work, and my supervisor Ashley had me dive in head-first. Day one, I started on an accessioning project. I got a crash course in PastPerfect and quickly learned just why people dislike the system. However, it was incredibly interesting to look back through ledger pages, letters, and order receipts that someone 80 years ago decided was important to record and keep. As I learned how to digitize and create metadata over the summer during a practicum it wasn’t too difficult to pick up on the process.
After I finished the John Taylor project, I started in on relocating folio art. The change of venue for the museum has made it difficult to find all the items. I have begun to go through each folio, find the accession number of the image, and enter its new location and a description of it in an excel sheet. After that, I go to the old handwritten accession and write out the new location of the photos. It becomes difficult when an object doesn’t have a number or isn’t in PastPerfect. If the former, I have to ask Ashley how to proceed. If the former, I just have to create a new PastPerfect entry.
Overall, it has been a good learning experience so far and I look forward to continue expanding my knowledge and working with different types of objects and images.
(image of PastPerfect entry)