Internships Blog

My third week interning for Carilion picked up where it left off the week before. I began the week continuing to research more potential interview candidates. 

On the last day of the week, I conducted my first interview with the manager of Guest and Volunteer services. We had a fantastic conversation for almost an hour. We got into the challenges her department faced while battling through COVID (such as personally having to assist with Health Checks for visitors entering the hospital), her previous time with the Roanoke Times, and how working at the hospital and a newspaper are more similar than many would think. The interview was an eye opening look into the less “glamorous” jobs that make the hospital run with the smoothness it does. 

Following the interview, I spent the next 3 hours transcribing the audio into a 21 page word doc before heading home for the weekend. 

I got the opportunity to digitize my first book from the rare book room at the library. I had to learn to scan on the flatbed scanner and with software. This differed from what I learned when I had a digitized project last semester. When it came to laying the book on the scanner, it could only fit one page at a time, so with the second page, I had to rotate the page upright in the software. Within the software, I could preview the scanned page to make sure that the page was straight, which sometimes took a lot of trial and error. This is also when I take the dragging tool only to get the page in the final scan. Before pressing the scan button on the final scan, I had to create a new folder for each scanned book page to live.
After I scanned the whole book, it was time to upload it to the internet archive. This is where I had to take the skills I learned from working on the Patricia MacVeagh project with how to create the metadata. Unlike the other project, in this case, I had to write the author, publisher, date, identification number, book measurements, and where the institution housed the book.
The next day, I digitized another book from the rare book room. I had to approach this particular book differently than the last book due to its miniature size. I could still apply the knowledge I gained from digitizing my first book with this book. The miniature angler book came with challenges; even though it could fit the scanner’s length, ensuring the scanned pages were straight was fine. I struggled with it getting straight for the first couple of pages, but I eventually got a system down that straightened both sides of the page. Unlike the first digitizing project, I did not have to scan each page. However, the system, internet archive, like if each page is scanned individually, so when looking at the system, it looks like a flip book. Both digitizing projects allowed me to learn different skills and apply some previous knowledge of digitizing.

This week we began our archaeological dig at the site of the Kennerly school. The Roberson project organised a community dig, so we had several members of the surrounding community coming to help us out. This was a great experience because I got to learn more about how shovel tests are conducted as well as interact with the community some more. On some of the test pits we used a soil auger to bore down to the natural subsoil, so ithe professor taught me how to use that tool, which was cool. Unfortunately, it rained most of the week so we had to cancel or stop digging early on some days, but we were still able to finish up our shovel tests and get some interesting artifacts. It was great to get to know some more members of the community, and some even shared their experience of going to the Kennerly school which was helpful for our research. Digging outside in the Tennessee Summer is not easy, and i went home tired every day, but it was worth it to interact more with the community and get more hands on archaeological experience.

My first full week as an intern for the Roberson project was a big learning experience for me. It is interesting being an intern for The University of the South in Sewanee when I attend Roanoke, but I got comfortable fairly quickly. The Roberson Project is the University of the South’s public history project investigating black history in Sewanee, which is a deep and interesting story to look into.
One focus of the project is an archaeological dig at the site where a neighborhood elementary school, called the Kennerly school, used to stand in the former black part of town. We have been using ground penetrating radar in order to try to find the foundations of the school. This technology allows us to effectively see through the ground and find features underneath it, but it will take a while for the data to be processed. We also helped set up for the Juneteenth celebration at the local community center where i got to know some of the people who went to the Kennerly school. Overall this has been an exciting week and I am looking forward to working on this project some more!

My first week at Carilion began quickly. When I first got there, I sat in on a meeting with the Marketing/Communication department that is working on the 125 year, history of the hospital project. Following this, I began familiarizing myself with how to conduct Oral History interviews, reading transcripts of Oral Histories conducted in Roanoke and reading a book ‘Century in Reflection’ about the first 100 years of Carilion’s history. This took up most of the first two days but on the third day, I began researching the first candidate I will be interviewing.
When the second week began, I was already becoming much more comfortable with the Oral History field and continued learning more about the process. In the morning, I learned to write an Into letter to send to the potential interviewee, requesting their participation in the study. After learning how to write an intro letter, I wrote one to my first candidate and we scheduled the interview for the following week. After getting confirmation, I continued to research her and wrote the questions that I would have to ask her when we met. In the afternoon, I joined 3 of the MarCom employees to tour a potential archive site for a potential Carilion exhibit project.
The next day, I joined another meeting with the department and listened as they discussed future plans and goals. Following the meeting, I sat down and reached out to my next interview candidate with an Intro letter. I quickly heard back that my second candidate would love to participate and began to research questions, however this candidate will be more challenging to find information on. Finally, to end my second week, I did my first practice interview with my supervisor.
This is bound to be a very fun and interesting internship. I have enjoyed learning about the oral history side of research and am extremely excited to continue researching and interviewing.

For my last week I research some more and finally completed my two exhibts. I researched the salem fire and police stations, the Municipal building, and Mount Regis center. Unfortunetly I could not find a much on the fire and police stations. However, the other two where very easy to research. I found out the the Municipal is the modern day Admissions building for Roanoke College and was used as a place for the town concil to meet. Mount Regis was a center for rehabilitating people with drug and alcohol addiction. It unfortunetly burned down in 2016.

The two exhibts I was working on throught out my internship were the Courthouse and the yearbooks from the 60’s. On my two last days I put the finishing touches on both of those. For the Courthouse I scaned the pictures and learned house to glue and cut out the pictures and the plaque. For the yearbook one I scanned the picture and plased them in the case. Unfortunetly, I did not have enough time to print out the plaque I wrote for that exhibt, but it should be put up in the next few days. Overall, this internship has taught me how a museum works. I relized that a job like this is one I could see myself doing in the future.

This week I set up my exhibt. For the first few days I was still looking for artifacts and researching the Old Salem Courthouse’s history. After I did that I went looking for the actual artifacts. I ended up finding an old oil painting, a picture of a group of men outside the side enterance of the building, and invatation from Roanoke College inviting people to the opening of the courthouse as an academic building and a bunch of postcards of it. I then started setting up my case.

I did this with out any help and I found it quite fun. I got to be creative with my placements and the story I decided to tell with my plaque. I set up the case with the oil painting and the plack in the back and then having the group picture on an elevated surface aswell as the post cards. I then put the invatation flat on the table. This make the case more 3 dimentional and more intreginig to look at.

This week we finaly started on setting up the new exhibit. This exhibit is showcasing a lot of the historcal spots around Salem this include the parks, the tannery, the pharmacys, and many more places. I also finished looking for more artifacts from places like Dixie Caverns and Point Pleasant house to put in their. I also started doing research for my own case that I get to currate by myself. I desided to do it on the Old Salem Courhouse which is now West Hall at Roanoke College today. I am also am still looking through yearbooks when I have spare time and helped with a field trip again.

One thing I learned while researching my own topic is that it is hard to find one with enough content and artifactes to use. I searched historical buildings for a while until I settled on the Old Salem Courthouse. Still there is not much their on that building either. But, I’m glad I researched it because most of my classes are in that building and I wanted to find out everything that happened their.

The past two weeks I have been looking through the archive of the museum to help set up for a new exibit they are curating. I looked for artifacts on the old Tannery, local pharmacys, old castle, Salem bicentennial, and plaseant grove. I also helped out with a field trip that came to the museum. Doing all this research on salems historical bulidings is super interesting to me and is further developing my reserch skills.

I have also been doing some light research on women in the gilded age. The director of the museum is wanting to revamp one of the exihibits that shows what a room in the brown house, which is where the museum is located, would have looked like in that time period. In the gilded age at least two of the daughters in the house would have been off courting age. She asked me to look into what their dating lives would have been like. She also asked me to look thought some of the local highschool’s and Roanoke College’s year books from the 60s to get a sence of their style and to mark pages that desplayed that. I am going to put these pages in the lobby to show Salem in the 60s