Week 1

Week 1
This week, I began my public internship at the Museum of Science and History in Jacksonville, Florida.    I am a new collections intern in the History Collections department.

Day One: Tuesday, May 21, 2013
My day began with a comprehensive tour of the museum, including the towers and offices which are not open to the public.  In the beginning of each shift, one of my responsibilities is to do a routine check of each exhibit to ensure all parts are working and to refill any brochures.  The tour ended with the Collections Room, which is my new "office" for the summer.  I learned about the location and organization of objects, which consist of a unit number, shelf letter, and box number.  Then, I spent the rest of the afternoon learning the Past Perfect Museum software.  I got familiar with the program and how to edit object information.  One of my projects is working on the archaeology wall.  Since the unit numbers recently changed, each object needs to be re-catalogued.  As an archaeologist, I am happy to look through artifacts of which I have at least a basic knowledge.

Day Two: Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Today I spent my afternoon cataloguing only one "object": a collection of pottery sherds.  I described and measured about 85 pieces of broken pottery.  It was a long day, but now I really understand Past Perfect and how to make edits of objects.

Day Three: Thursday, May 23, 2013
Today was my favorite day so far.  I spoke with Lenny, the Curator, about my other working project for the summer.  I am going to do research for an upcoming exhibit that explores local archaeological sites.  The exhibit focuses on seven different sites, and they progress chronologically.  We discussed what the exhibit will be like and what research I am to do.  For now, I am researching the sites to find out basic facts about the cultures of the people who once inhabited the area.  I am also researching the locations of the sites, as most of them are located in state and national parks.

I spent the day doing research on Google Scholar; I read several articles about the first site and its time period, the Middle Archaic.  Each week, I will spend one day at MOSH doing this research; the other two days I will spend working on cataloguing the archaeology artifacts, as some of what I catalogue will be used in the upcoming exhibit, and I may be able to help choose which ones get used.

I also brainstormed with Lenny about how to make the exhibit more interactive.  I suggested possibly using Google Earth to view the sites online.  It is an interactive program, and people could find the site and its surrounding area.  This is especially interesting because the parks can highlight their features, encouraging visitors.  Plus, a few of the sites are in people's actual backyards, so the real-time view of that will stress to museum-goers that archaeology really is everywhere!