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.