Internships Blog

After the past few weeks at Salem Museum, I can still say that I am happy with the experience thus far. As for the staff and my interactions with them individually I can say that I have gotten to know them very well, as well as learned new knowledge from them.

One of the most recent task that I have been given is correcting the present exhibits that are in the museum. These corrections and edits consist of checking for spelling, as well as possibly lowering a picture or raising it in order to insure that those who come through the museum can take the exhibits in throughly.

Another task that I have been practicing is the continuation of accessioning new items into the museums archives. One piece of knowledge that I have gained from this task is to always be sure what the item is that I am accessioning. That meaning that even if it takes longer to put the item into the museums system, it is better to be sure of the exact history of the items.

 

 

 

 

Currently, I am spending all of my time cataloging the house photos for the Roanoke Valley project. However, there are many other aspects of the Virginia Room that I could potentially get involved in. This research facility offers a wide variety of materials to utilize as well as technology that can assist research efforts and access to archives and I would really like to learn more about that process. The Virginia Room has extended stacks of reference materials, archived books, maps, and microform that can all be accessed by community members at any time. One particular material the room has are the variety of maps and architectural prints. I have yet to learn about the archiving of maps and it is a process that I am very eager to understand and experience. I have the most experience with cataloging in my time at Fintel Library and it is something that I could potentially turn into a full-time career.

Cataloging different kinds of items for community use can be a challenging task due to the different rules set in place by the Library of Congress, but I actually enjoy having to problem-solve how to catalog specific things. For example, we received a series of musical scores that were too thin to place in the general collection. Music scores get disorganized very quickly due to the fact that they are often less than a half an inch think. I was able to create a cataloging system for the scores using white envelope labels and school folders in order to organize them properly and make sure they were accessible to the students in the music department. I am hoping in the next month or so to also utilize my talents in this regard at the Virginia Room with cataloging projects and general archive work. Hopefully I can get involved in more projects soon!

I am back at the internet marketing and social media work. My goal has been to finalize adjustments to the company website to make it more aesthetically appealing and easy to use for users. My main focus has been to rewrite the captions and blurbs on the site to make them both easily read and conducive to Google search algorithms. The photos and graphics on the site have been troublesome as well. I am now going through the pictures on the website and others at our disposal to properly illustrate the wide-range of historical renovation that is not only possible but has been accomplished time and again. One of the greatest appeals of historic architecture is its sheer aesthetic quality. Many times people preserve buildings just for the beauty it adds to an area. I’m working on changes to the website to really showcase the range of American architecture that still exists all around the state of Virginia, and the skills of the tradesmen that make it happen.

The physical part of my internship began with a 5AM wake-up and a three hour drive to Tazewell to deliver a truckload of cut metal to the historical jail that we are restoring. The Tazewell jail was built in 1832 and expanded some thirty years later. The structural damage to the structure is immense, and it is taking the combined efforts of skilled carpenters and stone masons to restore it. The most interesting aspect of my brief tour of the job site was the wooden, possibly Chestnut, beams that ran the width of the jail. The beams made up the floor of the upper-level of the jail and supported the four iron jail cells that housed the prisoners of this small mountain town. The beams were roughly two feet thick, square, and about fourteen feet long. In total, about a dozen original timbers made up the floor of the second story.

At this point in the project of cataloging homes in the Roanoke Valley, I am about half way through the collection of photographs. It is very exciting to see everything go from 5 big boxes full of photos to only 2 and a half right now. It is projected that the cataloging process will be completed by mid-April which means I will be involved in the process of making them public to the rest of the library and community.

Since I have gone through over 3,000 photos so far, I have come across several problems that have to be addressed throughout the cataloging process. Most of the issues deal with street names and city quadrants. For example, there is a street in Roanoke that has the same name as a street in Salem and in Vinton. The only difference is the end of the street name (i.e. road, lane, street, etc.). When cataloging homes like this, it is extremely important to keep everything as organized as possible and file them in the correct order. Another problem I face very often is the similarity in street names all over the Roanoke Valley. The ‘W’ section of the cataloged items takes up almost an entire box  because there are so many streets that start with that letter. For example: there are about 25 different street in the Roanoke area whose street name all start with ‘water’ or ‘wood’. This can get very confusing when you are trying to type them into Google Maps and are trying to view the correct home. A smaller issue I also run into is paper cuts and rogue staples that prick my hands. Otherwise, the project is relatively danger-free.

I have also included a photo of my work space at the Virginia Room.

These past two weeks I have been working at the Link Museum location. Usually at this location I am working more with the exhibits. These past two weeks I have either been writing condition reports for some photograph collection that is to be shipped out in a few weeks or I was looking at our inventory list and typing them into Past Perfect.

The condition reports have been interesting, I have learned how to examine something so closely and to write down every little issue with the frame, mat, plexiglass and the miters. During this time, I was able to look at O. Winston Link’s work. I never heard of Link before so looking at his photographs of the railroads in the 1950’s was definitely something that I found interesting. Link mainly focused on taking picture of the railroad systems, locomotives, railroad work, railroad life, the stations, anything about a railroad and he’s photographed it. It has been tedious work but I’m glad that I’m almost done with this task and will hopefully be back to looking at collections.

One day last week, I was told to start taking our inventory list and compare it to a minor inventory that was done in 2011 and then take the combination of those and catalog those into Past Perfect. Before I even started Ashley warned me that this was going to be frustrating because the person who worked in her position before her was not organized. I found that to be extremely true, objects were missing a picture, some where completely not the same, some did not have an accession number. Overall, I have enjoyed this task because I get to see more descriptions of objects that are in collections that I might have not personally seen. This is something that I’ve enjoyed doing because it is definitely helpful for me to learn how to navigate through the Past Perfect program. This week I am to finish doing condition reports on the Link photographs and after that who knows but I am very excited to get back to work.

After these first two or three weeks at the Salem Museum I couldn’t be happier with the skills and knowledge that I have obtained. However on an even greater note the exhibit that Alex and myself have been working on was completed and is now open to the public (see attached pictures of the exhibit opening). The exhibits main objective is to give an overview of the history of oldest homes in Salem. One being Old Castle which is no longer standing after a horrendous fire, the other is Preston Place which is the oldest home in Salem.

The family history that comes with the Old Castle exhibit is very vast, and quite amazing to myself that the museum was able to obtain some of the pieces from the house. The Griffith family was one that reaches back very far into Salem history, however one of my favorite portions of the history is the fighting Griffiths which consisted of the four of the nine children during the Civil War era. The brothers were all in different regiments however when they all went to fight for the confederacy they all brought back different stories. Charles Griffith’s calvary sword as well as a black powder pistol that he was said to have taken from the battle field are also featured in the exhibit which may be my favorite case.

As for Preston’s Place the houses history reaches all the way back to the “Great Road” which went all throughout the new states in the 1800s. It is said that some very important players in the establishment of the states had stayed at the house however it is hard to clarify if true or not. As for the future of Preston’s Place it will be leased to a business from Botetourt called the White Oak Tea Tavern, which I actually have close ties with considering the owner is a close friend of my family. What a small world right?

In the coming days I will continue to work on the PastPerfect software and the accessioning of historical pieces.

 

These two weeks of my internship have been extremely educational. Ashley showed me how to navigate Past Perfect and I have started with newspapers from the 19^th century. I got to measure the newspapers and type up their locations, condition reports, and other various information. After I usually do a couple of the maps we begin on inventory again, this week I got to see a few interesting objects. For example, I saw a young boy’s bathing suit from the 1920’s, I was shocked to learn that most of the bathing suits from this time period were made from wool, I do not see how that was comfortable. Another fascinating clothing item I saw was a woman’s cape from 1861. Attached to the cape was a tag, it was not the original tag but it did say that this cape was $30 in confederate money. I found a money converter website online called, http://www.in2013dollars.com/ and I’m sure there was a difference in inflation from a U.S. dollar and a Confederate Dollar but $30 in U.S. money in 1861 would be equal to $773.90 in U.S. dollars now. This cape was very fancy and looked like it would be very expensive, also had been kept in fantastic condition.

A couple days after I came across the cape, I found a folder that contained Confederate money, bonds, and coupons. This was something that I could not pass up on to take a photo of. I found this to be ironic since I found the tag about the cape.

A few other things I found were about Roanoke College, one day when I was going through the maps to be entered into Past Perfect, I came across a magazine that was in pretty bad shape, there was no issuing date on there but on one page it mentions Roanoke College. It is just a brief three paragraph article that talks the beginning of the College and then about the accomplishments that the College is known for. From looking at the article’s pictures the magazine might be from the 50’s or 60’s.

Today, while I was searching through a donation I found a book called, The First Hundred Years Roanoke College 1842-1942, by William Edward Esienberg. I did not get the chance to look through the book since I found it three minutes before it was my time to leave. It just find it ironic that I keep on finding objects that correlate to each other days apart, it’s really interesting.

Ashley explained briefly that next week I will be doing something different, something with the actual exhibits at the Link location. I’m excited to see what is in store for me!

I am currently interning at the Roanoke Public Library, specifically the Virginia Room research center. Here I am cataloging thousands of historic photos of Roanoke area homes for the budding niche of House History in the Roanoke Valley. This cataloging process consists of many steps using excel spreadsheets and Google Maps. First, I type the street address into Maps and determine if the house number matches the photo and the house Google Maps pulls up. The photos do not match; I virtually walk around the street until I find the right one. I then enter in the street name, city quadrant or town,  house number, and date that the photo was taken. After all of the photos are cataloged in this way, my supervisor and I will work to organize them in binders for public access. So far we have cataloged over 3,500 photos and still have about the same amount left before they are finished.

Some of the issues I have run into with this project involved poor quality photos and the inability to look at the film. Sometimes the house photos also have film stapled to them, but sometimes it is just an index card with the film. We have no way of looking at the film other than holding it up to the light. Obviously, this is not the most efficient system.

I discovered within my first two weeks at Southwest Restoration the immense complexity that is the intersection of private, business and government interests in historical sites and their preservation. Many contracting companies “bid” for contracts, meaning essentially that they cold-call customers, hoping for business. Southwest Restoration, on the other hand, receives much of their business because they are known for pioneering the industry of historic restoration through revolutionary techniques of building material analysis and simple, proven building techniques. Few contracting companies in the United States specialize in historical renovations, and fewer are skilled at it.
The primary concern of the business that I am interning for is of course to make money from the contracts that they negotiate with individuals, public and private institutions and government entities. Funding has been a consistent theme in public history discourse, and I am learning about it from a unique angle. Southwest Restoration is on the receiving end of funds dedicated to repairing and restoring many historic buildings around Virginia and beyond. For example, a project that the company is working on is renovating the oldest barracks on the Virginia Military Institute campus. The funding from the project is coming from two different non-profit foundations and the Virginia state government, and dispersed through a committee appointed by the college. My first task with Southwest Restoration has been to make sense of the major forces at work in the community and beyond regarding buildings of historic value.