Internships Blog

In the past three weeks I have been busy taking care of various tasks, most of which I forgot to photograph to illustrate this blog.  The picture above is of a case in which there are 3 record books that contain financial information and are currently a part of our banking exhibit that opened on the 3rd of February.  This exhibit also contains the banks that I was working on in previous weeks.

Last week I was working exclusively in Collections with artifacts.  I spent all of Tuesday and Thursday matching information to object, packing, and adding information to a spreadsheet.

Today, I worked on organizing large maps and blueprints that we have on loan in order for them to be returned to their owner(s). They had to be handled very gently and organized in a specific order.  It was interesting to skim over maps regarding hospital, residential, and businesses.  I have also been given my main project for this internship, which will be to look through our FIC (Found In Collection) items and matching them to items within our records.

In the past two weeks, I have been working in departments outside of the Youth Services area, and it has given me a new appreciation for all that happens in a public library, as well as how everything works together. On Mondays during the month of February, I spend my mornings in the depths of the library with Tech Services and the catalogers. I met with the head of the department, Lisa, who gave me insight into what goes on behind the scenes. One of the most telling things about the job is that, while I was there, there was nothing to do. The library has had their budget slashed and so there are rarely new acquisitions for her to catalog. We sat talking for three hours about all of the odd jobs that she does in addition to cataloging, such as being the director of a foundation that works with those with special needs. The director of the city library system called while I was there and I got to see how people interact, as though the library is a big family.

In addition to Youth Services and Tech Services, I have had the opportunity to sit in on two Saturday classes in the Virginia Room, the archive of the library. The first Saturday of this month was a class on Finding Elusive Women, and the crowded room was given several pages of helpful tools and a lecture on how best to use databases to find women in history. The class is centered on genealogy, so Wendy Allen, the archivist, used the examples of her own family tree to show how she has traced her lineage back several generations. The second Saturday was a class on how to use the census and its variations to track genealogy. I was not aware of how complex it could be and all of the different subsets that exist. It was interesting to learn and both classes had at least a dozen attendees with their own stories to tell and challenges to share. Sitting in on the classes gave me a new appreciation for the types of services that a library can provide outside of just providing books and internet access.

For this semester, I have been given the opportunity to work with the Roanoke Valley Preservation Foundation. This group works throughout the Valley in many different ways, however their main focuses are centered around education, special preservation projects, and public policy. All of which are to promote the preservation of historic, natural, and cultural resources of the Roanoke Valley. For my internship I plan to help in the aspects of promotion and advertising, but I will also be working on an article for their newsletter as well as creating a list of contacts that will create a better relationship between the RVPF and other historical groups

 

throughout the Roanoke Valley. As for one the first task that I have been able to help out with was the Rosenwald documentary showing. This film showing was open to the public and was held at the Dumas Center in Downtown Roanoke, I was able to help with the running and clean up of the event but it was a great experience because I was able to meet many different contacts within the RVPF and other historical groups. This event helped me with my communication skills as well as organizational skills as I had to not only help with the check in process but also with donations to the foundation.

 

 

 

 

 

The event itself went very well and the documentary was so interesting. Although I myself had never heard of Mr. Rosenwald before or the many philanthropic activities he carried out, I am looking forward to learning more about this amazing individual and his great outlook on life.

All together I am very excited about this internship and the many opportunities it will present. I think that this internship will help me better understand what I would like to do after graduation as well as grant me a plethora of new skills.

This semester, I have the pleasure of interning with the Roanoke City Public Library system in the youth services department. The first two weeks have been full of adventures and learning a lot in a short span of time, and it has been more fun with each passing day. I have learned the basics of the complicated system the library uses and I have done some of the simpler tasks such as checking books in and out, and getting patrons logged onto the computers. In addition, I have begun one of two pretty large tasks that I will continue chipping away at. I am weeding the juvenile section of books that haven’t been circulated in the past two years, and then my supervisor and I sit down and see if the books should be kept, sent to a branch, or recycled.

While I am mostly at the main branch of the library in the center of the city, I have gone to help fill in at a branch with my supervisor. It is a very different experience from working at the branch, and I look forward to continuing to go to branches and learn the ropes there. I have also had the pleasure of filling in for Star City Reads volunteers, and I have been going to local schools to read to young children in the mornings. There are always plenty of things to be done in a public library system, and so far I have enjoyed it all!

My first full week of interning at the museum was mind opening; I would like to work in a museum after I graduate so I was really excited to find that I truly do enjoy the occupation. My first day I was asked to go threw each exhibit and take notes on what I liked and what I would change. And after I was done I was asked about my opinions, this made me think about how exhibits should be set up and how important having a good flow to the room was. You want to make sure that people go around and look at the exhibit in the right way so people will understand what you were trying to put across when you put it together.
My second day consisted of more of behind the scenes work, I spent most of my day in the archives looking through folders of old newspapers, books, and articles and was taught about accessioning items for the museum. One of the things I found most interesting was the book about female diseases written in the in the 1820’s. I also was shown how to wrap each item in a specific type of paper and how to box them up and then where to the item after it it was wrapped up. I was also taught how to use past perfect and spent the majority of my third day putting the items in the system.

 

I have just finished my second week as Intern at the Historical Society of Western Virginia.  We are currently in the midst of establishing some new exhibits so I have had a lot of hands-on work these first two weeks.  The first couple of times I came in to work we were adding volume to mannequins with padding for a clothing/textile exhibit, a picture of one of said mannequins can be viewed to the left.  This exhibit shows various forms of textiles from the 1930s, including clothes and quilts.  I also assisted my supervisor in the installation and hanging process of the quilts required for this particular exhibit, which was very fun and helpful.

 

 

This past week I have been working on a different exhibit.  We will be opening a loan exhibit of antique cast iron banks in early February and I have spent the past week creating an inventory of the banks that encompasses the information given by the owners and shows just how many we have.  The banks are in such a wide variety of figures, animals, buildings, etc.  They need to be handled very delicately and require gloves.  I have loved working on this because it is very detail oriented.  The image to the right is of two banks I have inventoried; one in the shape of a cute little Scottie dog, and the other of a cat on a wash tub.

My first week on the job was nothing I expected. I was hired as the Education Intern so I thought I would be working on field trips, tour groups, and development of activities for kids, but while its the off season I have been working on social media posts. I am not the most social media gung-ho guy so it has been difficult to adapt to a supervisor that would like to post two times a day if she could. I adore the environment of the memorial and all of the wonderful volunteers that I have met and learned from in the past two weeks. I just don’t know that I am really happy with what I have been doing. It feels as though I go in for 8 hours or so every week without gaining progress in my skills. I would like to work on education pedagogy and developing these activities for kids while also teaching them. Happily I am taking on a project of organizing a merit badge for the boy scouts on our scout day event but I wish I were doing more. It has certainly been interesting seeing how a small organization runs a monument and how drastic change can be made with new administration. Change and regime was not what I was expecting to see with D-Day. I hope to work more with the education side and hopefully take some more tours in the near future. I have so much to learn about D Day but I engage well with the material. I look forward to getting involved with more scholars and veterans of the event within the coming weeks.

 

Matt Myers

 

I recently finished up my internship at the Salem Museum, and it was a very sad time for me.  I achieved the goals that I wanted to achieve, and learned a lot about what it is like to do museum work.  I took on this internship because I wanted to explore the idea of this being a possible career for me.  This internship has made it my #1 goal to do museum work after I graduate college do to the outstanding experience I had.  I realized how much I had learned in my time working with Alex when I was making my own exhibit during my final days at the museum.  Of course Tyler and other museum staff were there to help, but I felt confident in my skills to do research, use past perfect, and make a presentable exhibit.  I really feel like I came along distance in my abilities to operate in a professional setting and the various different aspects needed in doing museum work, and it all came back to me while making the exhibit.  It makes me feel sad that my time at the museum is ending, because going to my internship was my favorite part of the semester, so I hope that soon I can be back doing work in a museum.

This is my Exhibit on Mt. Regis as it neared completion.

As I close the semester in this internship, it is a bittersweet type of feeling. I have learned so much in the last few months, from what accessioning is to helping set up events to inventorying and cataloging hundreds of items. Not only this, I learned why it is so important to properly care for and properly inventory items. A lack of these professional skills has made it incredibly difficult for Ashley Webb, as well as interns and volunteers, to discern exactly what is in the collection. I have learned just how much it takes to properly care of items and the amount of effort a simple inventory takes. It is no easy task and it was a privilege to have helped the organization. At the same time, there is still much work to be done. The title of this blog is a bit of a pun, since I have actually inventoried about a dozen or so forks. However, it is also important to state that it isn’t the end of the road, not for the HMWV. With all of the work left to be done, the road is simply forking to the side as I continue down my path and the museum keeps on striving to create a complete and accurate inventory and record system. I have learned that this job is too large for just a few people and must truly be a community effort through the help of volunteers and the community.

This is my last week at VMT and I absolutely have loved the experience.  Everyone has been so welcoming and happy to teach me about the museum.  This semester I have learned so much including the ins and outs of PastPerfect, accessioning processes, and helping with events. My supervisor has been absolutely amazing and she has helped me so much in learning about the down to earth everyday workings of a museum.  The picture above is from the Christmas event and has all the employees and volunteers working that day.  I know now after having done this internship that I definitely would want to continue to pursue a career in museum work with collections and archives.