Since I’m local to Roanoke, I decided that over spring break I would continue to work at the museum. One day I came in and Ashley told me that I would be continuing on inputting objects from the inventory excel sheet into Past Perfect. I don’t mind doing this task at all and my view is not that bad either. Even though looking at the computer screen for 3 hours was not that fun, I keep reminding myself that this skill is something that I could put onto a resume.
As I have been inputting inventory records into Past Perfect for a couple weeks now, we realized that the majority of the objects had no pictures, this is important for the Past Perfect page. So Ashley decided that it would be a good idea for me to get my hands on learning how to take these clothes from collections and dress them on mannequins. This was quite the task because I was constantly afraid I was going to tear some since the clothes I was working with that day were uniforms from World War 1. So that day consisted of dressing a small girl mannequin in male uniforms then taking pictures of every detail about the items. One box that I pulled off the shelf was a doughboy uniform that had the medals received in an envelope. I got to take a couple pictures of some of these with my phone, I found them to be so fascinating.
Another day I got to look at photographs and search for them on Past Perfect to find out where they are supposed to be filed. I got to see so many incredible photos, some were of the old Lakeside amusement park that used to be near Salem. There were tons of Hotel Roanoke from all kinds of years, one of the oldest ones I can remember were from the fire in July of 1898. I was able to take a picture of the photograph that was from the fire. In the photograph you see everyone I assume who had to escape from the fire out in the lawn and then some bystanders underneath a roof pretty far from the hotel. I just thought this photograph was something special simply because of the huge fire. I am not sure what Ashley has planned for me this week but I am excited to find out.
