Internships Blog

I started my internship with the Salem Museum a few weeks ago now and I am enjoying it! During the time that I have been at the internship so far I have spent time getting familiar with the exhibits and how they like to keep things set up. The exhibits at the Salem Museum are set up to show those who come in what Salem is like in the past and the present with items from throughout Salem’s history. Last week, I got introduced to their archive rooms and accession system which is called Past Perfect. The system helps them to keep track of everything that is donated and then accessioned into the museum. When these items aren’t on display they are kept in the archive rooms. I got to do a scavenger hunt activity that helped me to learn how the system works and will help me later on in the internship when I need to find something that has been accessioned! Pictured below is the scavenger hunt activity. I look forward to learning more while I do my internship here!

I was able to begin my internship at the Historical Society of Western Virginia just a few days ago, and I got to dive straight into some really interesting work. After I was shown how to use Past Perfect to update some photographs that had already been cataloged, I was handed a stack of recently donated photographs and given the opportunity to put them in from scratch. I input detailed descriptions for each photo and marked them with individual search terms so that people can locate them easier if they were to go onto the Historical Society’s website. What I enjoyed the most was doing condition reports; this entails holding the photograph up to the light and reporting any scratches, scuffs, or discolorations that could be seen with the naked eye. It made me feel like a bit of a detective 🙂

Overall, I had a very busy first couple of days, and I am excited to learn and experience more in the future!

Blog #5

My internship at the Salem Museum has come to an end but I am thankful for everyhting I have learned! I have spent the summer diving into the history of Salem and learning about the ins and outs of working in a museum. I’ve done everything from research in specific fields to add to the archives to writing and putting together descriptions for exhibits. I met wonderful people along the way, the three advisors I had as well as the visitors and volunteers that came to visit everyday.

My final project at the museum was to create an exhibit all on my own, using the tools and resources I have gained during my weeks. I chose to learn and show the history of the first women’s college in Salem, Elizabeth College. I spent a week researching and collecting data and artifacts that would fit perfectly into my exhibit. Once collected, I began writing signs starting with the beginning as Roanoke Women’s College and it’s journey merging with another school and becoming Elizabeth College. Though the college only stood for a decade before a fire destroyed it, there is still a piece of it in Salem today. Roanoke College absorbed the land it was on and gave remembrance by naming the new addition Elizabeth Campus. I have added pictures of the exhibit for everyone to read about but if you’re in Salem, I recommend going to the museum and learning more. I am so grateful for this amazing experience and look forward to going back the upcoming year and visiting everyone. If you do visit, feel free to add a flower to the Elizabeth College flower chain to leave your mark at the museum as well as to honor the memory of the amazing college. 

Blog #4

As I am getting to the end of my wonderful summer journey here at the Salem Museum, I have been taking in what I can! We had field trips come in Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday this week ages 6 to 14. They were part of the Salem City Summer School Program and it was so exciting being able to show them the history of the town they are growing up in. One thing that I gained from the experience of watching Alex, Fran, and Garrett teach these kids of different ages. I was able to watch them teach these kids, seeing the kids ask questions and stay so intrigued in the history was amazing. I definitely gained some communication as well as educational skills as a whole especially when it comes to engaging listeners. Along with helping with the tours and keeping the kids engaged and together, I continued to work on my exhibit. After a lot of research, digging through the archives and books, I decided to tell the story of Elizabeth College. As a woman student at Roanoke College, it is fascinating to learn about the beginning of women’s higher education in this area. It also is intriguing as Roanoke College had a connection as well and to this day still is connected with the school. One fun fact I learned was that they had. tradition to wear a flower chain at graduation. At the beginning of the assignment, Alex challenged me to make the exhibit interactive. So I decided to make my own flower chain where visitors can add their own flowers to it. I spent yesterday creating the chain and adding the first few flowers! I won’t go into to many other details as my next post I will go into more detail on my final exhibit but it has been so amazing being able to dive onto a certain subject and really grow my research skills as well as my critical thinking skills.

Blog #3

I have had so much fun the past few weeks learning new things while also improving skills that I have had, just have not used in a while! This past week was a little slower but it is prime vacation time for most families so I am not too surprised. I was still busy though, my first task of the week was to help out with inventory. One thing I will say, inventory in a museum that is filled with things is a lot more difficult than one could imagine. It was great being able to speak with some of the ladies who work with the Salem Museum in their past-time as volunteers! I was able to hear some of their Salem stories as well as learn what their interested in as well. I explored upstairs more than I have been able to which has been amazing. I am beginning to work on an exhibit for the museum that is all done by me, I won’t say exactly what it is yet but I have been able to do my Salem Research to find the perfect topic! I read the book, “A Town by the Name of Salem” by John Long and Mary Hill who gave great insight as to what Salem was like 1802 to 2002. The book was a big influence on my ultimate choice as it really detailed the hidden and forgotten history of Salem which is what I find the most intriguing. I also was able to read part of “Salem” A Virginia Chronicle” by Norwood Middleton who fun fact, used to live in the house the Museum was built in and around. Overall, I have had an extremely fun summer getting to know the town better as well as my research skills. My next task is tackling signs and my writing skills as well as how to put an exhibit together!

Blog #2

6/24/22

This past week as been so insane at the museum but incredibly fun at the same time. At the beginning of the week, I worked on updating the sports exhibit, I researched all the sports teams in the Salem area and wrote about any state or national wins they have received. What stood out to me was Glenvar high school, if you ever have free time, I recommend looking at their teams as they have been winning many championships over the past few years. Salem high school also has an incredible forensics team who just broke the VHSL record or most consecutive wins. This year was their 16^th year they have won the forensics championship, dominating their competition. The rest of the week I have been learning how to archive items and artifacts we are given and adding them to our database. I learned the layout of the archive room and walked through to learn the routine. There is a very specific way that historians go about archiving in museums. An item is first given an ID number that is specifically geared towards them, it starts with the year it is being archived. Then it is numbered based off how many items have been received in the year, I began at 423 as the item was the 423^rd item that has been archived into the system this year. The final number I based on how many are in the collection, if it is only one item the number is 001. If there are three items with in one collection you go from 001-003.  I have spent the past few days helping clean up the archival room and finally add all the items collected into the archival database so they can be properly used. The last thing I did this week was create an exhibit in the main hallway. We decided to do something different, and we create a case that showcased women’s fashion accessories through the years. We filled it with disco shoes from the 70s, old jewelry, fashion fans from the 1890s, hair snoods from the 1910s, hats from the 1920s, as well as an old Salem class ring from 1910. It has been so fascinating diving into different historical topics as well as being able to learn the little things you do not think of when you go to a museum. So much more work is done behind the scenes than anyone could imagine!

Blog #1

6/17/22

For my summer internship I chose to work at the Salem Museum. I was so excited to see what was in store and I have been having the best time. My first week I helped complete one of the big exhibits in the museum. It is the Salem Museum’s 30^th anniversary so they decided to put together a beautiful exhibit. The exhibit was filled with beautiful artifacts that the museum has collected through the years. I was able to choose a few pieces to set out in the exhibit, I chose some old Life magazines from the 70s as well as some old photos from when the museum was first built. I helped put together some of the written works that described the artifacts as well as set up some of the cases. My boss, Alex, let me research items and learn more about the history of Salem as well as some of the incredible things the museum collects. I went on a tour of the museum; they have an entire online and physical exhibit of the sports history of Salem. The city of Salem has incredible history and one of the most important is the dedication to sports and athletics. There is an entire database filled with all the incredible wins of the high school, local teams, and even Roanoke College teams. I am so excited for the rest of the summer and being able to dive in more on interesting topics as well as learn more about the behind-the-scenes research process!

In this next week, I will be wrapping up my internship with Roanoke College’s Center for Studying Structures of Race. I will be leaving this internship with a ton of knowledge about Roanoke’s racial history and how much hard work it is going to take in order to erect our own public monument for the enslaved laborers who contributed to the college. I have been listening to and transcribing an interview between Dr. Jesse Bucher and architect Mabel O. In the interview, Wilson gave a very in depth discussion about what UVA’s process was like erecting their enslaved laborers memorial. In addition, our last speaker was the influential Henry Louis Gates and he gave an incredible talk about the history of Reconstruction and answered many questions from the audience members. Gates ended his talk by saying, “We say that history often repeats itself, but it only repeats itself if we let it.”

I have been incredibly inspired by my work with the Center and I even completed a painting in my other coursework reflecting on Roanoke’s history of enslaved labor. I am by no means done with CSSR. I will continue to attend the collaboration meetings between the Center, Creative Time, and a variety of community members but this time, not as an intern but as a Roanoke College alum. I can’t wait to see the work that the Center for Studying Structures of Race continues to do.

For the last two weeks of my internship, I worked on finishing my exhibit for the museum. I spoke about how I researched for the final exhibit on three separate topics concerning COVID, that for me it was important to describe how businesses, schools, and hospitals dealt with COVID. I chose these three things because they impacted so many people and these were the places that continuously kept being reported in the news. It was important to get the feeling people felt and the immediate aftermath of everything once COVID spread. I created a large timeline including the general timeline regarding how COVID spread. What I didn’t count on was formatting it into something that would be digestible and readable for others. This took the longest time and was the most frustrating due to many small fixes to get everything perfect. I thought it was important to include the number of cases, the number of deaths, and the number of vaccinations. That way through the timeline the audience could see how things developed through 2020 and 2021.

I also included photos from the first people getting vaccinated at the Bergland Center and the 900 chairs set up to represent the deaths across the Roanoke and Allegney health district. I thought it was also important that people saw the physical devastation that COVID had, especially since everyone in living memory has experienced COVID firsthand. I wanted this to mostly be documentation about things from the immediate passing of COVID, this is important for future generations. These two pictures along with two graphs showing the hospital bed capacities at both Carilion and LewisGale. It was important to visibly show how COVID impacted hospitals, as many saw on the news how hard it was for healthcare workers. I wanted this to be a starting point for someone farther down in years, for them to be able to understand exactly what happened when for many of us the anxiety kept building every day.

My semester at the Blacksburg Museum and Cultural Foundation was an interesting experience. I believe that in working in a museum, we understand that no task is too small and that we all wear multiple hats. I loved learning more about the town of Blacksburg and its very interesting history and how it has evolved from its early settlement. The museum not only acts to inform visitors about its history but also current events, as I’ve discovered in my research. This was my first experience working in a museum with a high cultural focus, it also allowed me to gain more of a background working with local non-profits. I was able to assist the directors with research, donor and visitor outreach and even working on a small scale interactive exhibit. Even being at the front desk, although not exciting was still fun, seeing visitors react and say “This place is so cool!” or “I’ve never been here before but, I should have a while ago!” it just made me smile.

I hope that the museum grows with more people visiting every day, with new events happening all the time and with exhibits being refreshed I think that more people will be able to come and see what a place like this has to offer. The house is so beautiful and I hope that I can work at a place with this much architectural charm in the future. Although this building has gone under a couple renovations I think more people need to see the charisma of these buildings and what they can bring to a community.