Creating and Putting Up Exhibits

I am now two months into my internship and I feel a lot more settled in since my last blog post. The two exhibits I am currently working on both revolve around the diversity theme as there is a new committee on diversity that has been launched at USG which I mentioned in my earlier post. I have been working more with the library director and we decided on doing one of the exhibits on festivals and holidays around the world. I have been researching various holidays and gathering information on them for the exhibit. The second exhibit which is meant to be interactive will be a list of definitions of positive terms such as “inclusivity” which promote diversity. The exhibit will then have a place for students to write their own definitions and understanding of the term. The list of terms I came up with and their definitions according to the dictionary is complete. This should be going up in the library soon. However, the library has been understaffed lately which has made work in the library in general become very slow. It is often difficult to schedule meetings to speak to staff and have work approved, since they themselves are very busy.  Recently, I have been assigned various random jobs like arranging and organizing the hard copies of old exhibits and labeling them. The past week I helped my supervisor Nick put up picture frames in the library of photographs that students took from a Communications class. He taught me how to arrange wall exhibits and the importance of their placement. He’s also been teaching me about graphic design since he does that quite often. Even though the pace has been a slow, I am still gaining a lot of experience. I like that there is something new to do, even if it is now what I expected. I am hoping that by next semester once the library has more staff to fill in the vacant positions, I will get to spend more time with my supervisor so I can get feedback and learn from him more often.

Hectic Summer part 3: Both Sides of the Coin (so what does this all add up to anyway?)

So, I had a really busy summer.  Apart from several new lines in my resume and a pretty chronic case of sleep deprivation, what did I get out of it?

Well, it all goes back to what my 300 teacher kept telling us about jobs in the field of public history (I’m assuming that everyone reading this post is a history major, or at least familiar with the department): there are a few groups that are very well funded and there are a lot of smaller groups getting by as best they can.  More or less accidentally, I got to see both sides of the coin at once.  The Sandy Spring Museum is small and mostly focused on the community, while I’m not sure how you could get much bigger than the National Archives.  

In my spare time at Sandy Spring, I looked up grants and resources to restore a 200-year-old wedding dress that they held in the archives, which was becoming too fragile to put on display.  The National Archives, on the other hand, has the facilities and specially-trained staff to custom-make acid-free archival containers specifically for individual items in their collection if necessary.  I saw them during the tour of the conservation department.  At Sandy Spring, I helped with the setup for filming a fundraising video aimed at raising money to fix a pretty serious ongoing problem, which the Archives would have gotten fixed immediately.  Sandy Spring’s computers, at least the staff ones that I used, are so old that they run Windows 98 and only support Internet Explorer.  The National Archives has a modern, fully-integrated, secure network, not to mention all of the specialized scanning and imaging equipment that I used.  Sandy Spring has one part-time professional librarian/archivist and a handful of volunteers, while I can’t actually find a concrete estimate of the number of people employed at the Archives.

That’s not to say that Sandy Spring is inferior to the Archives, they just have a lot less money to put toward the same basic cause of preserving the past.  Frankly, I believe that the Sandy Spring Museum is a great success story; it has managed to find a way to remain relevant to the admittedly small community that it serves, even on a limited budget.  While both places have people passionately dedicated to their central tenets, Sandy Spring is far more firmly integrated into the community.  At Sandy Spring, they have entire exhibits on the history of specific local landmarks and movements, people in the community feel free to wander in, make suggestions, even loan pieces of art for exhibits.  At the Archives, none of this is possible; the Archives is simply too big, its mission too broad.  Sandy Spring is public history on the local scale, the Archives is much larger, and also much more formalized.  Neither approach is better than the other, and each can complement the other.  That’s one of the points that my teacher was trying to make, and I think that actually getting to experience that for myself in real time was really special.  I had a really fantastic opportunity this past summer, and I hope that I made the most of it.

The Historic Medley District Part III

Concluding at The Historic Medley District (For Now)

While the semester comes to a close, my work at the Historic Medley District continues. The process of cataloging the different documents and archives I am sorting through has not sped up, but it has definitely become less monotonous in nature. I recently came across a small cache of documents related to a Poolesville resident who had been a Prisoner of War in Germany during the Second World War. Many of these documents revolve around the publication of his memoir detailing his experience as a POW, but many others are correspondence between him and different Veterans organizations. These pieces of correspondence were written in regards to locating several of the men who had been part of this man’s bomber crew during the war. It is through recording and cataloging items such as these that make me feel as though I am doing something worthwhile, as these papers could have easily been forgotten if they had remained in the file boxes they had been stored in over a decade ago.

I plan on continuing my work at the HMD after this semester is finished. Even after these first several months, I haven’t quite scratched the surface of what I had naively set out to accomplish at the beginning of September. It will probably take another several months, and much hard work, to catalog the rest of these files. From there, the process of digitizing what I have cataloged and then turning that into a functional archive will undoubtedly take even longer. My hope is that, even if I am unable to finish what I intended to, I will at least have set up the enough of a foundation of work that it can serve as a starting point for whoever comes along next.

The End of the Beginning

Chapter 3: The Final Act

            As we embark on the final chapter, it behooves one to reflect upon the journey taken. Just over one year ago, I was a humble bartender that enjoyed the rhythm of the bar, making mixed cocktails, and conjuring a versatile conversation on a nightly basis. When I decided to conclude my time as a bartender, I felt it uncomfortable yet exciting, uncertain yet clear, and foreign yet familiar. The future was bright with the opportunity to be a legislative intern in the Maryland House of Delegates. That experience was invigorating to the extent of it becoming one of my most cherished passions, public service, government, policy. I knew that this was the career for me and it was time to continue the journey. The final step in that journey was to intern and work as a full-time employee in the Governor’s Coordinating Offices.

             I entered the Governor’s Summer Internship Program with hopes of learning about the executive branch, forging meaningful lifelong bonds, and doing all I could to make a positive impact on the office and Maryland. This experience culminated with a final presentation to Governor Larry Hogan, Lieutenant, Governor Boyd Rutherford, and various senior staff members within the Hogan Administration.

Figure 1. Policy Presentation to Governor Hogan and Senior Staffers

            Just to recall, in April I stood with Delegate David Fraser-Hidalgo in this room to take a picture for the Fracking ban legislation. Now just a few months later, I along with my esteemed group members, had the attention of the Governor as it was our turn to speak on policy. Our policy presentation focused on Oyster Restoration in the Chesapeake Bay. Oysters are essential to Maryland’s culture, economy, and environment. They have been a catalyst in Maryland’s history since the seventeenth century when John Smith first documented them. It should be noted that oysters existed and flourished long before the Europeans arrived and nearly wiped out their entire population. Our group focused on three policy options as solutions to continue to restore the oyster population to a healthy level. We focused on environmental education programs, a program that would stimulate job growth in areas with limited opportunities, and renewing legislation on a successful tax incentive shell recycling program. Our group was fortunate to go first and as Governor Hogan stated, “You guys really set the bar high for the rest of the groups. That was an excellent presentation.”

                        

Figure 2. Presentation in action, by my hand position I believe I am speaking at this point

            After we presented, the group of public service scholars were fortunate to take a group picture with the Governor.

                       

                 Figure 3. GSIP group photo, I am directly behind Gov. Hogan’s left shoulder

            It felt fantastic to take a group photo like this one after the legislative session photo in the same room. It was surreal that this photo was due directly to my work and efforts. I absolutely appreciated working as a legislative intern on the Delegate’s policies, however this was special because I was the one presenting and have the chance to be the change agent.

            Finally, it concluded with each of us receiving a certificate on behalf of the state of Maryland and signed by Governor Hogan himself.

                     

Figure 4. Receiving Maryland Certificate for my internship with the Gov. Hogan and Lt. Gov. Rutherford

            It was an amazing experience this past summer as part of the Governor’s Summer Internship Program. Without any doubt, this was one of the best summers of my entire life, with a good chance of being the best one yet. I am truly thankful for the opportunity to grow as a young man, learn about government, and meet wonderful people. Maryland is a wonderful place to be and I am glad to have had a role as a change agent that brings forth positive change to the state. With regards to the future, my time in Annapolis has served me well, I think it might be time to check out Washington, D.C. and see about this Capitol Hill thing that people have talked about.

            Thank you for taking the time to read about my story and my internships. They have made my college experience feel like a vacation, given that my vacations are filled with learning and finding ways to bring positive change.

All the best,

-Victor Francis Mercogliano

The Historic Medley District Part II

Since my last post, work at the Historic Medley District has been progressing slowly but surely. As I delve farther into the boxes of files, I’ve come across more and more documents that are in need of preservation. Since this is not exactly in my wheelhouse, it has required me to research proper techniques required for amateur document preservation.

Section of the John Poole House's Library

Another part of the job is deciding which documents should be catalogued and which are nonessential. Couching many of the more relevant documents that have been stored, are dozens of inconsequential ones such as advertisements and order forms for historical periodicals. These items, I felt could be safely overlooked during the cataloguing process. Another set of documents I opted not to catalogue were the dozens of unintelligible handwritten notes, most dating back only ten years or so, from members of the organization. As the content of these many notes were indecipherable, I decided to not include them in the catalogue but not to discard them wholesale. The amount of time it would have taken to discern the content of each of these documents would have been far too much for a reward that would have been marginal at best. However I wouldn’t discount returning to these documents in the future, after the brunt of the work creating this archive is finished.

One of the many file boxes

These past several weeks have taught me that one of the most primary virtues needed for working in this field is patience. Not every document or item I come across will be as exciting as Civil War era letters or land claims from the 1800s. Most will probably be of a more mundane nature, such as brochures from past events or exhibits. All of these relevant documents will need to be catalogued, no matter the level of interest they generate.