Internships Blog

The second half of my internship this semester has gotten a lot more interesting.  The redundant and meticulous process of cataloguing items is still a fairly regular job of mine, but my internship coordinator has been trying to give me new experiences so that I leave the Virginia Museum of Transportation with more than one skill.

 

A few weeks back I was cataloguing a collection from a deceased Roanoke resident names Paul Stonesifer.  The majority of this collection consisted of rail tickets from the Pullman Company, which I learned was a very luxurious form of travel as every traveller taking a Pullman car got an overnight sleeping suite.  Some of the particularly interesting parts of this collection are several World Series baseball tickets from the year 1952.  As I went through this collection piece by piece, I was able to figure out Paul Stonesifer’s story.  That is, he was a wealthy man who could afford to take a train trip from Roanoke to New York to watch the World Series.  It was really neat seeing how there are genuine stories behind these items I am cataloguing.  They are not all just shriveled up pieces of paper of rusty old junk.

 

The exciting bit of this is that my internship coordinator thought it might be fun to make this collection into a tiny exhibit.  Our first step with this was figuring out where the exhibit would be.  In a museum as jam-packed as the VMT, this is an important step.  We decided that we would remove a transportation hats exhibit near the entrance of the museum and replace it with pieces from this Stonesifer collection.  We will construct the narrative around the concept of “Oh the Places You’ll Go,” sort of playing on Dr. Seuss’ famous quote in order to introduce patrons to the concept of transportation that is obviously integral to the VMT.

Benvenuto back guys. As this blog post wines down, I have a few more things to tell you all. If you recall from last week, Alex and I were in the middle of re-doing the Civil War gallery. After while gathering our supplies, we got to work. This picture here is what the gallery looks like now. It took us about two weeks to complete our vision, but at last it is finished. The room has a different feeling in it. You are not being suffocated by the number of artifacts hanging on the walls. It is strange to see how a few new signs and new designs, and a few new items can go a long way in making a gallery feel welcoming and educational.

Stay tuned for my last post because I have been given an opportunity to create my own mini exhibit, and because I love you guys I’ll tell a secret—it deals with machinery, needles, and clothing.

This weekend I attended Scout Days at the memorial which is one of the events I have been working on for about two months. I have been planning activities for the boy scouts and girl scouts as well as planning my very own presentation. I did not know what to expect but I had a great time and enjoyed every minute of it. This program definitely taught me a few things and the first would be public speaking. Ironically the badge program I did was public speaking but putting myself in front of girl scouts and their parents was a new experience. I was nervous but I was able to present and I found that it went well.

I also found that I was able to learn a lot about planning programs and events. I was there for setups and takedowns and was also able to plan a lesson. Planning a lesson was the biggest part of my job with this event and it was a lot of work. I had to learn how to center my program about a topic such as World War 2 around children so that it was not too intense. I drafted many presentations before the event itself but I found that I learned a lot when it came to making a lesson plan about WW2 that fit with the requirements of earning the girl scout badge. I find that this experience is helping me with working on my public speaking as well as the education part of lesson plans.

 

Benvenuto back guys. This is part three of five, in a series dedicated to the Salem Museum. If you recall from last week, I was in the middle of peer editing and making signs for the gallery. This week Alex and I have started on a long transformative process of the gallery into a new updated interactive space. Right now, we have only got two walls complete, but exhibit building is a process. For example, we began gathering our supplies—like mounting putty, signs, artifacts, and tools—and brought them to the second floor. Day one, we finished the wall, which is featured in this post. Day 2 encompassed wall two, and day three was wall three. Currently we are not done, for we’ve got two more walls to fill, so stay tuned and find out the product.

Second, I must say that I’m warming up to designing exhibits. There is a sense of craftsmanship in constructing from the bottom up to the finished product. I enjoy helping hand in many different areas.

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.    

Benvenuto back guys. This is part two of five, in a series dedicated to the Salem Museum. If you recall from last week, I was in the middle of peer editing for the remake of the Civil War gallery. Good news is that the peer editing is finished, all of the signs have been printed, and glued to foam board. I’m so excited to remake this gallery, which will occur after this well anticipated break.

Naturally, I wanted to give you guys a look at the current gallery. It definitely needs some tender loving care. Of course not only will the signs have a makeover, but the fabric in some of the cases will no longer be black. I’m warming up to designing exhibits because I get to have a helping hand in many different areas. For example, peer editing, sign making on Publisher, archives, and putting everything together. So far it has been fun. I can’t wait to see what the Salem Museum will have me doing the last half of term. Anyways that’s all that I have to say for this week, stay tuned to see the finished product.

 

Hi everyone, this week I have been focusing a lot on the artifacts of World War 2. I have spent about a week and a half now working with the past perfect program and the artifact man on site in order to go through and catalog all of the items the memorial has received. These days have been very exciting as I get to see things such as old flare pistols, journal entries, old uniforms and patches, and sometimes the odd miscellaneous postcards from Japan. Being able to actually see and examine artifacts from D-Day has been quite a delight for me. During these past few weeks, I have learned much about being behind the scenes of cataloging objects, handwritten notes, and even the random stacks of photographs from World War 2. I find that by being able to work on artifacts, I have gained a spiked interest in that field of history.

As I am working with the artifacts, I am also preparing and getting more involved with behind the scenes of the annual D-Day parade. I have joined in on meetings and plannings on the people involved from veterans to even boy scouts. Being involved has also given me a voice in helping plan out volunteers and being on site as a coordinator the day of the parade. Although we are just getting started with all the major details of the parade, I am very excited to be apart of the parade and all D-Day events to come.

Arian Walker-Roberts

My first few weeks here at the Virginia Museum of Transportation have largely consisted of training and getting my feet under me.  To understand the inner-workings of a museum, one must be at a museum regularly, so my being present has shown me what happens behind the scenes, especially in the areas where collections are maintained and organized, AKA the back room.

 

It is here in the back room that I’ve gotten to do the majority of my work so far, which has included cataloguing such random artifacts as empty oil cans, books about circus transport, and lease agreements for an AMOCO station in Roanoke.  It’s always interesting seeing what will come across my desk, because through the process of cataloguing these items I get to learn all about these items.  Sounds like a historian’s dream to me!

Hello guys, this is the first of a series of five blog post about life in the museum world. This picture seems boring and dull, you are completely correct. The last two weeks have been filled with grammar and writing. The Salem Museum is in the process of re-doing their Civil War room, and I have been tasked of redesigning the signs. This is an easy task—wrong 😊; the Civil War is not my time period and I know nothing about Salem’s history. Yet, this process has been a learning experience. I have learned more about local history and grammar. For example, this photograph is the fifth time of proof reading. Even though this task has been long and tiring, it has been pretty cool.

In summary, stay tuned to see what happens to “boring” historians next week.