During these last two weeks, Alex Burke and I have collaborated on going through newspapers to give an idea on what was going on back home in Salem and Roanoke during World War II. At this point today, we have finished the research from the newspapers and are beginning to look how to frame this information in a concise but informative manner. Since there is a lot of information we gathered from these newspapers, the biggest challenge we face is keeping the write ups for the exhibit short. We also want to avoid cutting out important events too, so this has been a tough task for us so far.
With the write ups being planned and put together, I have been working on using the museum’s software to look in the archives for artifacts that I feel would make sense to be used in the exhibit. I have mainly focused on local items that tie Salem in with World War II. These consist of pamphlets of high school football games that have a mention of it, or just slice of life items that shows where people of the time’s heads were at. Next, the plan is to start accessioning these items, which I will be learning here shortly.