Baltimore Heritage Internship, Part 3: Bolivar in Bedford Square

Bolivar in Bedford Square In my daily Baltimore City life, I spend a lot of time wondering how and why things are where they are. Working with Baltimore Heritage, Inc., has given me the opportunity to dig for the answer to one of these questions. I must have noticed the statue on N. Charles Street first about 10 years ago. I’d probably driven past it a thousand times, but this time I was walking up Charles Street past the mansions of Guilford, and it’s presence struck me, the realistic but unfamiliar face, and the military regalia on the metal bust. The description on the pedestal before was unexpected, “Simón Bolivar, 1783-1830, Liberator of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia.” But it said nothing about when it had been placed there, or why. What was Bolivar, the “George Washington of South America” doing in tiny park in a wealthy residential neighborhood? I thought of him as a South American revolutionary figure unrelated to Old Baltimore’s past. I would wonder about it occasionally when I passed it by. When I started my internship at Baltimore Heritage, Molly Ricks, my supervisor, had a list of possible sites for me to write about, but also encouraged me to suggest some of my own. I had a few to list, and we decided that I’d start with the Bolivar bust, as it seemed like an interesting and perhaps not too complicated assignment. And I really did want to know how he turned up where he did. It turned out that so did others. I shared my question on social media and got a surprising number of responses, mostly from people who lived in Charles Village but went running in that neighborhood and had jogged by it, also wondering. I began to look for the answer. The responses I got on social media, while interesting, turned out to be dead ends. A friend who used to be the Editor of the sadly departed free weekly, The City Paper, remembered one of the regular contributors writing about the very same question. But it was so long ago he didn’t have a copy. And when The Baltimore Sun bought The City Paper just to close it down, they took down all of the content that had been online. He’d try to reach the author, but it was a long shot. And he never was able to reach him. An acquaintance posted that he’d been there on the day of the dedication, and that it was there because some embassy staff lived in one of the houses right behind the park, and he’d been on his paper route. But he had no other information but for this over 50 year old, perhaps not completely accurate memory, and nothing I found in my research backed that up. But there wasn’t much of anything to find about the location. All I learned looking in all of the right places (I think!) was that it was there simply because there was room for it there. Perhaps there was a special reason, but I could find no evidence that there was. What was interesting was the why of it being in Baltimore at all, not the where of the site where it was placed. And that was what I wrote my post about: https://explore.baltimoreheritage.org/items/show/707

Baltimore Heritage, Inc. Part 2: The W.E.B. DuBois House

“W.E.B DuBois had a house in Baltimore?” That was my surprised response to Molly Rick’s suggestion of the site as one of the five I would write about for the Baltimore Heritage, Inc. website as part of my internship. I’d always associated DuBois with Philadelphia, New York, and Atlanta, all places where he spent many years studying and writing, and sometimes teaching. And it seemed odd that such a titan of civil rights, Black, and intellectual history had lived in Baltimore for at least ten years and that I’d never heard about it in my twenty of living here. I suspect that at least part of the reason that it was under the radar that DuBois had a home in Baltimore from 1939 to 1950 is that the location had little, if anything to do with his professional and activist life. DuBois was known for his sociological studies on Black life in Philadelphia, his prodigious output, including one of his most famous works, “Black Reconstruction in America,” and his teaching life are associated with his time at Atlanta University, and his civil rights and political work, especially with the NAACP are connected to his life in New York City. In fact, while he was living in Baltimore he also had a home in New York. In fact, DuBois’ choice to have a home in Baltimore during that period was personal, it was in order to be close to his daughter, Yolande, who taught in Baltimore city public schools for decades. I was presented with a number of challenges in this assignment. First, there was so much information! My pieces are limited to about eight hundred words each, which is fairly short. It was daunting to confront how to cover a long life with so many different events, changes, publications, moves, and influences on other people and on the United States itself in less than one thousand words! I felt the pressure of having to define a life that was so important and yet that many don’t know about to the public. If I was writing for an academic audience, I could at least assume certain prior information. Here, in order to do what I was meant to, I practically had to start from scratch. In my work for Baltimore Heritage overall, and not just on this topic, I felt a responsibility for my beloved city, which is so often seen as pathological, neglected, and a joke, to show the brilliance in its history and its inhabitants, its overall importance in the history of the country. Perhaps this is not the most objective outlook to have, but I don’t think that public history (and don’t even get me started on academic history) can or even should pretend to be objective. As public historians, our responsibility is to the public, whether we are bringing it information, gathering information from it, or creating knowledge together. That does not mean burying histories that are unpleasant from the public eye. In fact the opposite is true. In order to be respectful of and responsible to a community, the truth about that community must come first. My motivation was related to the importance of telling less known truths about a community, like that the most important Black intellectual of the twentieth century chose to make the little Northeast neighborhood of Morgan Park his home. And in telling that truth there arose a conduit into talking about truths on a grander scale—for example the history of civil rights activism, the historiographical debates (ongoing!) about Reconstruction, and how and why Baltimore has and hasn’t changed over the decades. I had to make hard decisions about what to include. My first draft was twice as long as the allotted word limit. As both Cicero and Mark Twain observed, writing shorter pieces is more difficult than writing longer ones. Cutting it meant getting rid of information that I found fascinating, like DuBois’ daughter’s very short lived marriage to Countee Cullen, major poet of the Harlem Renaissance, and details about his falling out with the NAACP. I also had to find out the best way to frame the story—to begin and end it in Baltimore, although it DuBois’ life is not a Baltimore story. The work of other public history institutions, particularly the Lillie Carroll Jackson Civil Rights museum, helped to flesh out elements of the story, the walks DuBois took with Carl Murphy, that were not available in newspapers or other written resources. I hope that what was resulted was accessible, honest, and respectful of both Baltimore and DuBois. Let me know what you think! https://explore.baltimoreheritage.org/items/show/705

Internship at Baltimore Heritage, Inc.-- Aimée Pohl

        Founded in 1960, Baltimore Heritage, Inc is a small (as in only two staff people small!) non-profit organization devoted to historic and architectural preservation in Baltimore. The organization works to preserve, educate, and communicate about Baltimore's past in a variety of ways. Their active website is full of an amazing depth and breadth of resources for the public, including hundreds of written stories as well as over 180 5 minute videos histories about people, places, buildings, neighborhoods, and cultural and political events in Baltimore's history. Some of these videos and stories are done in partnership with other organizations, such as the series "South Baltimore: In the Shadow of History" created with the Baltimore Museum of Industry, and "Virtual Histories," a weekly video program made in cooperation with the Baltimore Architecture Foundation and The American Institute of Architecture.

        The arrival of the COVID pandemic in Spring of 2020 meant that many of the organizations in person offerings, such as talks, classes, and walking tours had to be suspended or adjusted. A few outdoor tours re-started in the fall, and the hope is that more will return in the spring. Tours in October in November visited Green Mount Cemetery, the Federal Hill neighborhood, and in Dundalk a tour called, "Life Goes on, The Legacy of Henrietta Lacks and Turner Station.” Online talks and discussion include lectures by academics, including UMBC's own Dr. Sarah Ann Rubin presenting on her digital project “Slave Streets, Free Streets: Visualizing the Landscape of Early Baltimore,” and Dr. Lawrence Brown on "Mapping Baltimore Apartheid."

        In addition to these educational offerings to the public Baltimore Heritage assists in the preservations of buildings and neighborhoods by connecting neighborhoods and homeowners to grant makers like the Maryland Historical Trust, Baltimore National Heritage Area Authority, Maryland Humanities Council, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and a variety of local foundations—they also make connections with loan and tax credit programs and guides to fundraising, and give out mini-grants for local projects.

        My internship is based on working on the educational content element of of Baltimore Heritage’s mission, not on the preservation funding side. I am writing 5 individual posts, collaborating on one of the 5 minute video histories, and creating and helping to lead a walking tour. The video and the tour will be in the spring. As I’ve started writing my pieces and discussing with Molly Ricks (UMBC History MA Alum!), Community Engagement and Communications Manager, and my supervisor, ideas for pieces as well as for the video and walking tour, the current prevalent issues in public history work have arisen. We’ve discussed the question of what places and people and buildings are determined to be worth of historic status, and by who, how to expand the coverage of Baltimore’s history to include traditionally marginalized groups, thorny issues of who gets to tell those stories, and who owns them—how and should we make difficult stories palatable, who are we responsible to—all questions that have a special resonance in this kind of public history institution. I will go into more depth in some of these issues in my next two posts, which examine the process of writing these short histories.

Internship at the BMI: Part 3

 As I wrapped up timing and tracking, I was still worried I would be just shy of the hours needed to earn full credit. My fears were put to rest when my supervisor gave me two new assignments. The first was to make four averages of the data points. The task was simple, but the actual process of doing so was even more tedious than collecting the data in the first place. The sheets on which I collected the data had a map of the exhibit, allowing me to properly trace a path onto the paper. In order to aggregate these, I had to use a new sheet representing the average by using ten of the other sheets, and tracing each one individually onto the new page. Many data points that I created were a veritable zig-zag of lines, Xs and arrows, so tracing one and then following up with another was confusing and messy, but not in a negative way. The first of four averages took me about an hour and a half to finish, and the process of creating it led me to put that aside and work on my second assignment. This secondary one was similar to the Spanish tracks I had attempted to create earlier in the semester, but instead of replacing audio I was refining the existing subtitles for anyone that might view the video. It was much easier to work on than the averages, since much of the work was already done for me by YouTube's auto-generating subtitles and I simply had to proper grammar (punctation, capitalization, etc.). The list of videos would ultimately go unfinished however; it was the very end of the semester and I had actually fulfilled my hour requirements from the amount of time I put into working on the timing and tracking averages. My last day was December 11th, and I left the museum for the final time as an intern after turning in all four sheets. 

Ultimately I truly enjoyed my time at the BMI, and I would recommend any Public History intern to consider working there. During my time doing the timing and tracking project, I learned much about Bethlehem Steel's influence on the city and the impact the shuttering and ultimate closure had on the city. There's also plenty of information on local companies that had their start in the city, and beyond the focus on Baltimore there is plenty of information to gleam on how industrial cities changed throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. In conclusion, the Baltimore Museum of Industry is a great place to intern at, with a welcoming staff, interesting exhibits, and a variety of opportunities to learn how you can apply your skils as a public historian.

Internship at the BMI: Part 2

 The biggest assignment I undertook at the BMI was timing and tracking, a tedious but somehow interesting exercise in data collection. The goal of timing and tracking is straightforward; I was to watch guests as they entered our newest exhibit (Fire and Shadow, the Rise and Fall of Bethlehem Steel, usually referred to as F&S among staff for the sake of brevity), and describe them in as much detail as possible. All information was important; what sort of group was coming through, the approximate ages of each individual, what they were doing, what they were talking about, how long they stayed, and even the routes they took inside the exhibit. Each group represented one data point, and my endgame goal was to get 40 data points in order to have a safe average that could represent the foot traffic in the exhibit. Since the museum is only open to the public on Fridays and Saturdays, this limited my time on the floor to those days, leading me to worry about fulfilling my hour requirements for the internship. Fortunately, I was able to add some time in by transcribing my data onto a Google Sheet document whenever I could.

The process of timing and tracking was easier said than done, due to several reasons. For one, it could get very dull sitting on a bench for several hours of the day waiting for people to stop by and stay for a meaningful amount of time. One of the conclusions I came to was that younger people and families generally aren't interested in the exhibit as much as older people are. This led to many instances of people strolling through the exhibit very quickly, and therefore not being a good data point due to their brevity. Secondly, actually jotting down the data was meticulous work, since it required tracing the approximate path each person in a group took, noting how many times they may have entered or exited, and listening intently to any conversations going on. Additionally, there were days when there were very few visitors or none at all, prolonging the process by another day.

I did enjoy my assignment though, despite all the tedium associated with it. Seeing older visitors to the museum go down memory lane while reading the exhibit was nice to see, as many of them were children during the steel mill's heyday, or even workers in the plant at one point or another. One guest from Pennsylvania held a conversation with me about his father's time at Bethlehem Steel's plant in Bethlehem, PA, and told me the worker culture there was similar to the old plant here in Baltimore based on what he had read. Eventually, the time I spent timing and tracking came to an end, and I was given my final task at the BMI..

Internship at the BMI: Part 1

Unlike most of my peers, I took this internship not as a requirement for the Public History minor, 

but in order to get what I saw as three easy credits and job experience. 

During Advising in spring 2021, Dr. Meringolo asked me if I was looking for an internship to take, 

and while I didn’t have any particular ones in mind, she was very helpful and asked me several questions 

in order to help me come to a decision. I informed her that I preferred an internship in Baltimore City, 

given that it’s where I lived and worked, and that while it wouldn’t be a deciding factor in where 

I chose to intern at, I also informed her I didn’t wanted to do archival work, as several of my peers 

have done for their internships. I’ve always preferred working around or with museum guests 

at my regular job at the Maryland Science Center, and wanted to preserve that experience wherever 

I would intern at. Fortunately the people at the BMI were happy to accommodate me, 

and I began my time there on August 27th, the day before classes began

As for the museum itself. I didn't have much of a connection with it in the first place. 

I had been to BMI once when I was in third grade, but I wouldn't be able to tell anyone much about 

the visit given the passage of time. Federal Hill, the neighborhood the museum is a part of, 

is an area I know very well; I've spent the past five years working in the area and as a 

local to Baltimore I wanted to stay in an area that was familiar to me. 

My biggest reason for taking the internship, however, was my interest in Baltimore's industrial past, 

and how it's decline still affects the city to this day. Working at the BMI, I figured, was 

naturally the best way to learn about this past.

My first assignment sort of helped me in that regard. I was to replace the English audio tracks 

of their YouTube videos and replace them with a Spanish one, as part of the BMI’s efforts to be 

more inclusive. The videos weren’t very long, and are more of a quick history lesson rather than 

going deep into the history, as they do in each video’s respective exhibit onsite. 

I remembered enough Spanish from high school to piece together sentences and know what the 

speaker was saying, but the real challenge came from the actual editing. 

The Spanish audio was sometimes twice as long as the actual video, due to the Spanish narrator 

speaking so slowly. This led to instances where the new video would have the narration still 

discussing something in the first few minutes of the video, while the images presented in the video 

didn’t reflect what was being talked about. Eventually I let my supervisor know about the issue 

after not being able to come up with an easy fix, which led me to my main assignment of my internship.

Assistant Librarian Technician at the National Gallery of Art's Vertical Files | Blog #3 (FINAL POST)

Final Update - Past, Present, Future with The National Gallery of Art

Thoughts

    In about five days, it will be about exactly a year since I received a notification for my formal offer letter,  confirming my employment as  'Librarian Technician' at the National Gallery of Art's Library. It listed the expected salary, the date which I'll be expected to complete necessary paperwork to be appointed, and the sort.

It's odd thinking about my tenure at the National Gallery of Art, seeing as working there as a student assistant has exceeded my initial term. In that time, there were a number of new learning experiences, both on my own as well with others' guidance, that informed not only my personal working habits, but also helped give me a trajectory for my desired career path. Namely, it has directed led me to see how curators often directly contribute to special collections within these libraries. As someone who aspires to be a curator, the idea of managing exhibitions and working directly with artists and/or historians excites me. However, my work here has allowed me see the depth of curatorial work beyond this -- such as how they contribute ephemera to collections such as the NGA's Vertical Files or Auction Catalogs. As a part of my job, I've even seen this from my research on some Evans-Tibbs artists, some of which being museum directors, gallerists and curators alike. This too has demonstrated that their work too was not one driven only by their initiative, but informed by changes in those around them, be it board members or communities' desires or shifts in what their collections became as they acquired works. To put it shortly, the scope of these careers is far-reaching in its influence. Public history internships and the careers it introduces you to are ones that are constantly changing, fluid & dynamic in how they shape how we interpret our past.

I hope that this doesn't come across as too abstracted or long-winded. Rather, I hope this communicates the value and impact this internship has had for me. In this post, I'll get more into the more concrete lessons & reflections I've made during this internship.

Past: What Could've Been Different

    In reflecting on my past performance compared to now, it's crazy to think about how much you'll learn and not realize it especially in a position where the little things: labeling, filing, weeding, and all the central responsibilities at the Vertical Files build up to specific standards which its collections follow. Initially, I felt as if I was never careful enough, but now I realize that learning the collection's standards is more of a process than something to be taught quickly. What I felt could've been different would be asking about the standard itself -- for example, some of the quirks within the Vertical Files' alphabetical ordering aren't reflected in the VF Primer, a resource made specifically for new interns working within the Vertical Files. As a project, I am currently revising this document for the next intern that will eventually come by.

   On a more general note, another challenge I reflect on is overcoming limitations in communication. Every week, I meet with my supervisor to discuss progress on current projects, new tasks or projects expected soon or covering questions & issues that had not been addressed. However, even still, I feel that describing an issue or my workflow on a project can be difficult, often lacking the right terminology or phrasing. However, it was important for me to realize that my supervisor wasn't expecting me to know everything. There will be issues that crop up and it wouldn't be any more or less a fault of my own. As an intern, you will always be learning and you will always be learning to ask more questions, even to the point of redundancy. The work that is done at the Vertical Files, and similarly in other library collections, is one about the quality of work than quantity. Filing away materials up to standard or linking bibliographic records to the right artist serves as an example of this. Your job as a librarian technician at the Vertical Files is one that focuses on ensuring these materials are accessible for researchers.

Present: What I've Learned

Reflecting on this, labeling & filing materials for the institutional and artist files has been the foremost area where I have learned the most. I no longer make the errors when labeling specific artists whose name header differed from the usual LOC/NACO standard or VF-specific standards. As one of the problems that did cause me issue then, it has shown I’ve been able to learn how to better verify these name headers. Overall, this year has made me learn what I felt was the most significant: 

1. Labeling & filing up to standard for the artist & institutional sections of Vertical Files
2. Creating records & linking name headers for newly graduated artists before filing away
3. Cross-checking between VIAF & the Mercury Catalog (our library catalog) to see if materials are labeled properly, and present within the collection already
4. Proactively reaching out to co-workers to help determine materials I am unsure about – such as whether a material is an auction catalog or a rare book
5. Ensuring returned folder materials are organized & labeled correctly, scanning in materials with barcodes, double-checking for NGA Publications
6. Utilizing other databases beyond the Mercury Catalog, such as OCLC WorldCat, to better determine materials’ page count
7. Meeting the standard for the collection’s weeding process by removing materials not belonging in the collection, unfolding materials where possible, relabeling in more-visible areas and tidying up whenever able (removing staples, placing materials in protective covers, ect
   

It is my hope that by following these individual tasks, however small it may seem on the surface, it can make my work process more efficient & ultimately allow for better ease of access for our library patrons’ research interests.

Future:What I Expect to Learn & What I Hope to Learn

     As a librarian technician, I am still going to learning much more as I continue working here. Fairly soon, I'm expected to learn about working with our collection of microforms and the process of scanning & digitizing our collection. In all honesty, I would love to learn more about cataloging and creating more in-depth records. Having gotten a brief experience of this with creating records for artists who newly graduate to their own folders in the collection, it excites me to learn about cataloging. Often times, librarians will learn through going through a library science grad. program, but being able to touch on this more -- even just working on our metadata interface pushes me way ahead of curve.

Writing, Research, and Administrative Intern at the DC History Center; Final Post

My final post for my time at the DC History Center was less focused on the history side of their operation and more about the operational/administration procedures that any non-profit organization must go through to operate. By this I mean fundraising. 

 To efficiently keep track of potential donors, the Center uses a fairly popular fundraising database called Neon. However, through understaffed years, new contacts for Neon had been left un-entered and a large list of different individuals and organizations needed to be entered in the database. This was my task for the remainder of my time there. An uninteresting and simple task, it was basically data entry. It did serve as a decent refresher in Excel since I was working with spreadsheets of data and entering it into Neon. 

Rather than continue on about my final data entry task, I wanted to take this time to reflect on my experience at the DC History Center as a whole. In short, I really enjoyed my time there. Working in DC is always a challenge, especially since I’m in South Baltimore and chose to drive in instead of taking the train. Fortunately, the internship was only two days a week, one of which was from home so I only needed to travel into DC once a week. 

I’d have to say my favorite experience was writing for the Best of the Web series in the Washington History Magazine. The experience of researching websites and analyzing them on their content felt very natural, like a real world application of the intense analysis I’ve been doing as a history major for years. I also really liked working under Jane Levy, whose guidance during the writing/editing process was invaluable. 

I also enjoyed putting my research skills to the test with the dairy farm project. Working from almost nothing and finding a decent about of information on at least two of the dairy farms felt rewarding and allowed me to use the skills I’ve learned in undergrad and grad in a real world application. The final data entry task was simple but also a useful insight into the realities of working for/running a non-profit.   

Overall, I learned a lot from this experience. I feel better prepared to go out into the Public History job market with what I learned at the DC History Center and I wanted to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Musgrove for pulling some strings and everyone at the Carnegie Library for giving me the opportunity to work with them!

 

MSA The Legacy of Slavery in Maryland Program: Penitentiary Records Blog #3

As my internship at the Maryland State Archives comes to a close, I find I have much to reflect on. I have been working with both the Maryland Penitentiary records and the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission and have contributed to both by the end of my internship. For the Penitentiary records, I have contributed greatly by transcribing a large number of the records and preparing them for the creation of a database better accessible to researchers. I have located and marked many sections for avenues of greater research, such as sentence discrepancy, child imprisonment, and pardons. For the lynching project, I have conducted research and found evidence for children playacting lynchings, provided further information on known lynchings (such as using details on maps and known landmarks mentioned in newspapers to postulate a rough location for the place the lynching of John Simms took place), and I am currently writing a biography for the Maryland State Archives on the man known as Jim Quinn, who was lynched in 1869. It has been enlightening to work with these records from the 1800s and to recognize that unfortunately, many of the issues from then are still around today.

This internship has been important for the benefit of gaining and training skills and becoming calmer and more efficient with meetings. In terms of skills, I have predominately learned better ways to research and to analyze documents. Working with the penitentiary records and lynching records required that I always question and look beyond the words and to search for what might not be stated. The advice from Mr. Chris Haley, my intern supervisor, and Dr. Papenfuse, the former State Archivist, has been extremely invaluable. They provided great insight into my research and helped me to recognize alternate avenues of research and to show how something which might seem minor in the Penitentiary records could prove to be so much greater when analyzed and examined.

In addition to their advice, I had weekly meetings on my project with Mr. Haley, and often other members of the Maryland State Archives. I have felt that public speaking and presentations were always my weakest point. This internship certainly helped me to improve this and helped me to feel so much more prepared and comfortable with them. I had to learn how to better budget my time each week to balance my workday with time to prepare for those meetings. At first, I definitely tried presenting too much as I tried to figure out the best way to manage it. As the internship progressed, the meetings felt more natural as I became more familiar with everyone. I had nothing to worry about with the meetings and as the one working on the project, I was the expert on those records. It became a lot easier being able to explain my findings and research into the Penitentiary records when I realized this and began to limit my notes to the basics instead of covering every detail I found.

This internship was also valuable to me as it gave the opportunity to get a feel for the Maryland State Archives as an institution to potentially work for. I have met the people who work there and toured the building, and I feel just like I did when I first walked into UMBC when searching for a college, very welcomed. I have only had good experiences when interacting with people from the archives and I have enjoyed doing work with Mr. Haley, especially as it is on the research side. This for me is one of the most important reasons for why I have been pursuing the MSA for potential employment. Working with the Penitentiary project and the lynching research project has made it clear that the MSA is deeply involved not just with research, but with actually utilizing that research. This is especially important with the cases of traumatic history that emerged from the history of lynching in Maryland. The MSA works closely with local communities with this to document and investigate all such occurrences in Maryland, and this year was the start of the public hearings with Allegany County. The remaining hearings for the different counties and their research into their lynchings will likely occur next year. This just reinforced for me that the work I was doing matters and it reinforced my feeling of the internship being valuable.

After examining my work this semester, there is one major facet of my work with the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission which I would still want to learn. This is to gain experience by working with the different communities and people who are working with the Commission. I have read some of their work and research and have listened to the Allegany County public hearing, but I do believe learning skills to work directly with those communities would have been useful. I may be better at meetings with those who are deeply invested in the topic as part of their job, but I do not know whether it would translate to being able to facilitate discussions. Nor do I know how to best engage those who are interested or to teach those members of the community who are unaware. That is understandable as this was a research internship as opposed to an internship working with the public. Despite this, the internship was still valuable in both the skills and understanding of Maryland history it has taught me. It has made me thoroughly more familiar with archives and their functions and it has greatly contributed to my thoughts on the possibility of pursuing full time employment in an Archives.

Writing, Research, and Administrative Intern at the DC History Center; Post #2

     In my last post, I outlined the first major task I was given when I came on board with the DC History Center. Focused primarily on writing for the historical societies’ magazine, the next task given to me was rooted in research. One of the Center’s public facing initiatives is through social media. One of the ways the Center does this is by creating posts about newly processed collections that are donated to the historical society. 

The next post they wanted to prepare was for a set of glass milk bottles they had in their collection for a while. These bottles were from different dairy farms thought to have originated in DC. My task was to take the little information the bottles provided, mostly company names and addresses, and try to find as much information on these diaries as possible. Alongside the bottles were crates from old local DC chicken farms, but, due to time constraints, I never got to the poultry farms and only researched the milk bottles. 

I started by taking a look at the photos of the bottles which had been taken by the societies’ head of collections. The bottles belonged to four different companies, Alderney / HL Black and Son, Chestnut Farms/ Chevy Chase Dairy, Hamilton, and JW Gregg. With these four potential company names, some addresses were also provided when I was given the task. So, it seemed like a good place to start was to look up their locations in the Center’s Kiplinger Research Library city atlases. Dating from the early 1800s to the turn of the 21st century, I focused on the late 1800s to the mid 1900s as we had surmised the bottles had come from this time period. Working with the head of collections Anne McDonough, we searched the atlases for any hint as to where these farms were located. Unfortunately, little information could be gained from the atlases. 

Next, I decided to focus on confirming addresses/company names via DC city directories. This proved slightly useful as I was able to confirm the name and address of at least two dairy farms, but there was still little new information to be found. So, I turned my focus towards old newspaper articles or old advertisements listed in the Washington Star and the Washington Post cir 1900. I found information on two of the four farms about patents, registering of company names, and advertisements for their dairy products. Unfortunately, I found almost no information on the Hamilton or JW Gregg bottles. Feeling like I had exhausted efforts to find any information on the dairy farms, I typed up my notes and sent them over to Anne.

 However, I never really heard back about the research or social media project. I went to the Center’s Facebook and Twitter in preparation for writing this entry and found only one post about the milk bottles which asked if anyone had any information on the dairy farms they came from. There had been no educational post about the information I had dug up. Understandably, I hadn’t been able to find much so I can see if they hadn’t been comfortable creating a post on such little information. Regardless, the experience gave me a better understanding of researching collections. Not everything donated or collected is going to be useful or, by itself, significant. The bottles themselves had too little information to scrounge up more than background information. Perhaps this preliminary research is part of a bigger project they have in the works on DC’s dairy farm scene, which I was led to believe was unique in some way, or perhaps it was simply just not enough to move forward and that’s just how research goes sometimes.

Final Post: Oral Historian for the 20th Anniversary Joseph Beuys Tree Partnership

 As the collection aspect of the oral history project began to wind down, I had to move on to creating the final form of the project. As previously mentioned, the goal of this project was to create a sort of archive dedicated to the Joseph Beuys Tree Partnership and the amazing people responsible for its creation and maintenance. Once I had completed all the interviews and transcribed them, I had to organize the information in a way that would be most helpful to researchers utilizing this resource in the future. For this, I created a finding guide, which not only explained the project itself, but Joseph Beuys, the original artist who came up with the concept almost 50 years before UMBC began this project. I wrote small explanations for every interview, who the person was, what their role in the project was, and a small insight into what they touched on in the interview. This finding guide would be the first thing people would see when attempting to look further into the history of the Joseph Beuys Tree Partnership, of which my oral history collection is the major source.

The hopes for the future of this project, now that its completed are multi-fold. First, is for researchers, both within and outside of the university to be able to have a fuller understanding of the history of the institution and its cooperation with Baltimore City Parks and Recreation. Specifically for students at the university, this history becomes all the more important not only because they go to the institution, but also there are many chances to use oral histories in class, both within and outside of the field of history. Art students have before used oral histories to create visual storytelling which is both practice in animation and also enhances the history. Besides the recording and preservation of UMBC and Baltimore City history, this project will also invite the public to be more conscious of what goes into their neighborhood parks through twentieth anniversary celebrations and the availability of the final project to neighborhood committees. 

Overall, this internship was extremely fulfilling and beneficial in terms of my historical skill building. Not only have I been able to meet really amazing people in the non-profit and city planning sphere, I have strengthened my skills like negotiating meetings in stressful circumstances, creating relevant questions to ask, as well as recording, transcribing, and presenting the information gathered. Using my historical skills to reflect on more modern history was very interesting in that I was able to see different ways that my skills could be useful to me in the workplace, outside of academia. I had a great time working with the Sandra Abbott from the CADVC, and I learned so much this summer that I will bring with me.

 

Internship with the Baltimore Museum of Industry - Summer 2021
Claire Brocato

Blog 2: Progress of Project and Value of Internship

In my previous blog post, I explained that my goals for working with the BMI were to learn about the ins and outs of collections management and to learn more about what it means to be a public historian, and through the BMI, I have been able to make progress on both of those goals. So far, my day-to-day work in the collections department at the museum has varied a lot, but from what I have seen and heard at the museum, that seems to be the norm for everyone who works there. At the beginning of the summer, most of each day consisted of processing and cataloging recent acquisitions in the Past Perfect program and conducting general collections care. However, the research on old accessions turned out to be the most complicated part of the internship. 

At the BMI, there are a lot of items that are uncatalogued but have been a part of the museum’s collection for a long time. As a result, if an item is found without a tag or mark to indicate its accession number, research has to be conducted in the Past Perfect database to see if the item was ever accessioned. If the item cannot be found in the database, it is assigned a temporary number and added to the database. Also, researching miscellaneous items is a necessary step in conducting an inventory of objects on exhibit and inventory in the BMI’s offsite warehouse. Additionally, I was able to dive deeper into why the work I was doing day to day matters through Anne Fahy’s book Collections Management. According to the book, if due diligence is not done for cataloging and taking care of material culture, a museum can get into legal trouble, and that is why the BMI goes to great lengths to inventory each item. 

Furthermore, the BMI has presented many opportunities to network with museum professionals. Both of my supervisors in the collections department are people who I greatly respect. The Director of Collections & Exhibitions, Jane Woltereck, is a former Smithsonian employee, and I have learned so much from her about collections management, and the Assistant Registrar, Curtis Durham, is John Hopkins alumni which is one of the grad schools I am considering for the future. Another networking opportunity was with Danielle Nekimken, the designer for the new exhibit Fire & Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Bethlehem Steel. Danielle Nekimken works for an independent design firm, and I was able to meet her when I was assisting in the installation process of the exhibit. This experience also helped me better understand what I learned in the book Exhibit Makeovers: A Do-it-yourself Workbook for Small Museums because I was able to see what goes into making an exhibit happen.

Overall, working with the BMI has been very valuable. First, I have discovered that I learn by doing much more than by reading, so having the ability to learn how to do collections management firsthand is vital to my education. Second, I have been able to gain a clearer understanding of which aspects of museum management that I enjoy, but I will dive more into that topic for my next blog post.

Blog 1: Collections Processing and Goals for the Internship

 

Internship with the Baltimore Museum of Industry - Summer 2021

Claire Brocato

Collections Processing and Goals for the Internship

    To learn more about what it means to pursue a career in public history, for the summer and fall of 2021, I will be working and learning in the collections department of the Baltimore Museum of Industry (BMI). Because the various industries of Baltimore have played a significant role in the history of the city, the museum plays a vital role in keeping that history alive. In a small way, I will assist in that goal by working with the collection that helps tell that story. The position will be two days per week in the collection department, and my duties will include processing and cataloging recent acquisitions, conducting an inventory of objects on exhibit, and conducting inventory in the BMI’s offsite warehouse. 

    Additionally, I am excited about the opportunity to work at the BMI because it will help me learn more about what it means to be a public historian. Presenting history to the public is a very involved process, and I would want to learn more about some of the jobs and work that make that process possible. Because the BMI is a medium museum, the collections department also works closely with the education and archival departments, and as a result, I am excited to learn more about how a museum is run in unison. More specifically to my interests, my goal is to learn more about the careers that are related to material culture which, for the BMI, means working for the collection department. 

    Another goal for my internship with the BMI is to learn the specific ins and outs of collections management. Because the internship project will include processing, cataloging, and inventory, I would like to learn how to do every step of the process firsthand from people who do it for a living. As previously stated, the collections department works with the other departments of the museum, so I am especially looking forward to working on exhibits. More importantly, my main goal is to discover what a career in a museum would look like on a daily basis.

Assistant Librarian Technician at the National Gallery of Art's Vertical Files | Blog #2

 Update - New Projects, New Lessons

Preface

    It has been quite a while since my last post! Autumn has (more or less) settled in, with winter not too far off, and likewise my internship at the National Gallery of Art has also gone through some change. Working within a research library is bound to have new projects in managing such a collection. While taking on new responsibilities can be daunting in its own regard, it is also an opportunity to learn from both successes & failures in that process. As you read through these new experiences encountered during my internship, take time to think beyond your goals, expectations, and the initial logistics of learning your job, at least for a brief moment. 

    How actively can you receive feedback for your work? Can you balance new work responsibilities while maintaining your academic obligations? As you have continued your internship, how have you been able to manage with both the workplace environment? Does your actual work flow have different pacing from how the job was initially described?

These questions are just some of the questions you could be asking yourself in regards to your internship, especially if you're considering work within public institutions such as libraries & museums. I'd like to frame this update around the idea of change since the work within libraries (maybe surprising for some!) is always changing, with slower weeks, faster weeks, and weird weeks. Keep this mind as you read!

Updates on Existing Projects

 Telework

Currently, I am doing research on our Evans-Tibbs artists and sourcing for their wikidata pages. While there has not been much of a change in responsibilities for this project, managing this project while the National Gallery of Art has moved into Phase II has changed. With the museum moving to Phase II, there is now a requirement for the majority of my hours to be on-site.

While switching to a new schedule posed its own challenges, it was important to manage my expectations when completing research on these artists -- and especially making sure to communicate this with my supervisor. It was through our conversation that this project was not a time-sensitive project & like any project I've worked on, it was always quality over quantity.

And with less hours allotted for telework, this would also ultimately mean less records processed for the Auction Catalogs project. This doesn't mean that I can't try to make the most out of this; I try to split my time teleworking so that the majority is spent on artist research since it is a more involved process . This project requires a bit of overview of Wikidata's various terms. Likewise, editing for Wikidata means sourcing according to both Wikidata & the project's standard. For me, this meant checking over common databases for sources, checking the statements to see if it matches the property fields on the spreadsheet.

While this may getting more into the technical details, it is important to consider that the tasks within a museum & library environment is detailed-oriented. As I have received new responsibilities, it has influence on how I'm able to work on other projects.

In-Person Work

- Regular Tasks -

Overall, there are three central responsibilities at the Vertical Files - labeling new materials, returning materials and, while doing this, seeing what artists & institutions are ready to 'graduate' into their own folders & creating records for them. For a good while now, filing these materials into drawers creates a practical issue, especially as the collection has been around for decades: SPACE

With the Vertical Files' drawers getting tighter, it's harder to file materials. So it is important to weed materials that don't fit the standard - for us, it is primarily weeding materials over 50 pg (verifying this through WorldCat), duplicates, paper copies of popular publications and other oddities. Sometimes, the drawers you're weeding are (mostly) fine, but just filled with stuff - this will require knowing what to unfold, what needs protective sheets and other tidying. In many ways, organizing & protecting a collection of ephemera brings new & unique issues. Some materials are very damaged to where you may question why it is even there. Others are loose materials that might be completely unidentifiable. Even in new tasks where you expect the unexpected, there are little nuances & peculiar things that you might've never considered.

- Cross-department Tasks -

    Recently, I had the chance to work with my co-worker, Charlotte, on a new project for the Auction Catalogs department of the library. Keeping a collection of auction catalogs shows how art is sold, how it moves across the world, the kind of places which these works are sold, and so much more! This time, we recently had a large donation of materials from one of the gallery's curators. It was up to me to sort these materials to figure out which belonged better to the Vertical Files, Auction Catalogs collection and what didn't fit at all. Working with co-workers during this time has been exciting, especially when it makes you learn about what drives others' passion in their work. I've also learned that making friends is not too hard either!

    As a simple task that could be completed in a few hours, it still does require a bit in analyzing these materials. On the surface, many might see a magazine for an auction house as the same as a catalog -- but for a researcher, the distinction is important and necessary to get valuable information. There are some tasks that can only be completed on-site, even if they may seem simple. These things can be spring up on you and you have to be prepared, but luckily you have others around you who can assist with every question - big, small and extra small. In the last blog post, I talked about shelving for the Circulation team as they had a backlog of books being returned at the Fall's beginning.

As a brief aside, the telework project on Auction Catalogs previously mentioned is also cross-departmental.

- Annual Review & Closure -

 Having worked here for basically a full year, it was time for my annual review. This is something that some work place environments require and there can be a bit of bureaucracy involved - there was quite a bit of writing when it came to making my own self-reflection document - listing elements that were critical & non-critical. There was a need to talk over the job description's responsibilities, whether they were accurate, going over specific goals, being scored to the position's guidelines and all the sort! What is important however is that the communication about the work I've been doing had already been quite consistent & regular between my supervisor and I. In many ways, this process made more sense for a permanent employee than an intern & that set the tone for our annual review.

Annual and semi-annual reviews may seem daunting, but they're actually a great opportunity to communicate difficulties, long-term goals and address over-arching questions about your job. Honesty in presenting yourself and the work you're proud of can make for a stellar review and going over what might be expected of you later. It is important to see this not as a moment to be harsh & overly-self critical, but as a moment to just...talk about your job!

  With this being said, going through this internship this long has shown me much of what I expect from future career prospects. I hope that this has given you a bit of insight into museum & library-related careers - that under each institution, there is a network of different departments, people and systems working to maintain these collections. They might seem static on the outside, but there is a world of change beneath it all.

Blog 3: Final Reflection on BMI Internship

Internship with the Baltimore Museum of Industry - Summer 2021

Claire Brocato

November 11th, 2021, was my last day at the BMI. I was sad to say goodbye, but I was grateful for everything I learned while interning there. When I first had an informational interview with the BMI, they said that every day in the Collection Department looked different, and I learned that was definitely true. Over the five months I worked there, I learned about cataloging, researching, conservation, inventory, and much more. In terms of cataloging, finding my way around the software, PastPerfect, seemed to have the biggest learning curve. I was still discovering new aspects of the software up to my last day. However, I was able to catalog thirteen accessions over the course of my internship before switching to working on inventories, and I believe it is important to mention that accessions often have more than one object within them. In terms of conducting inventories, I learned that it requires a great deal of organization, but I also learned that it is a much bigger project than a five-month internship can really tackle.

While at the BMI, I began an inventory for zone one of the Bakery, and I worked on processing objects at the warehouse. Both were daunting tasks because the BMI has thousands of objects that have not yet been inventoried or organized. It would take a team of people years of daily work to go through everything, so it makes sense that I was only really able to dip my toes into the inventory work. However, that was something I wish was different about my internship and about the museum industry in general. I wish there was a better way of organizing everything, a better way of getting funding for everything, and a better way of paying people to work in museums. The collections management book I read had a great deal of information about the importance of taking care of each item, but it is not currently possible to do that at many museums because they do not have the funding. Additionally, to find out what object was what, I had to do a considerable amount of research in the PastPerfect software. Sometimes I could find the object, and sometimes I was not able to find it because it was never added to the software. That was often unsatisfying, but it was simply part of the job.

In the end, the opportunity to work with the BMI to learn more about collections management was an incredibly edifying experience. It confirmed my desire to work in museums for my future career, and more specifically, it confirmed my desire to work with collections over other areas of the museum field. At the start of my internship, I had thought about going into exhibition design or archives, but for now at least, I would like to continue to focus on collections management. Some aspects of the field I would still like to learn about though are conservation and grant writing. I loved learning about how to resort and seal rusted metal using wax, so I would like to discover even more conservation techniques in the future.

Writing, Research, and Administrative Intern at the DC History Center; Post #1

            Unfortunately, because of technical difficulties and a few issues surrounding my work load at the beginning of the semester, this is the first time I’ve posted to the Intern blog. My internship at the DC History Center started back at the tail end of August 2021. Through Dr. Musgrove’s contacts, I was given the amazing opportunity to work for Jane Levy, director of the Washington History Magazine.

            At first, I was informed that I’d mostly be writing for the magazine for their “Best of the Web” series--a section which examines private and amateur web sites presenting DC history and analyzing their historical authenticity and presentation. I was given examples of previous “BOTW” issues to scour through and told to go out and find some local DC history sites to review. I had never done any work like this before so I looked through old examples of the series and decided to tackle two sites, one the Kennedy’s center history of DC’s jazz scene, the other, a Howard University site on the history of their medical school. The latter was rejected; it didn’t meet the standards for the series. But, the DC Jazz history site was perfect. After reviewing the website and listening to the oral interviews of local jazz legends Billy Taylor and Frank Wess, I went to work on the article. Afterwards, Jane provided me with feedback and told me the article was great. Additionally, I found a different site called “Curbed DC” to review. 

Curbed focused on providing short, “social media-esc” posts on touristy attractions around DC. Again, I missed the mark with Curbed. After writing up my first draft, Jane informed me that Curbed was also outside the realm of the “BOTW” criteria. Slightly defeated, Jane assigned the final website to me which they needed turned around quickly since we were going to print in a few days. Glad to have the site given to me, I went to work decrypting its format, content, and presentation. I quickly finished and submitted it to Jane. 

Jane thought the piece was good but that it would need some edits so I waited to hear back. After about a month had passed, I heard back from Jane that the last piece I submitted had undergone some serious rewrites by another writer on the magazine and she asked me if I still wanted my name as author. As I opened the edits, I noticed that my work was barely there. While it wasn’t the first time I had been edited, It was the first time I had been completely rewritten in a professional setting. I wasn’t sure if I did want to keep my name on the piece so I sought Dr. Musgrove’s advice on authorship under heavy rewrites. He suggested I ask to have my name remain as a co-author. I liked the sound of that so I did. 

I learned a lot from writing on the “BOTW” series. Jane, a wonderful editor and mentor, helped me understand the specific criteria for the series. It felt like I was freelance writing and working with a client to specifically meet their needs. I also learned what it was like to be heavily edited, which can really hurt the first few times it happens. Regardless, I learned a lot and I’m a better writer for it. 

MSA The Legacy of Slavery in Maryland Program: Penitentiary Records- Blog #2

 

As this internship approaches the halfway mark, I find that I have much to reflect on its value. I have made great progress with my transcription work, having just reached the year 1821 in the 1811-1869 records. Within these records, I read through old and sometimes barely legible or illegible records, which I then record in Excel in preparation for it becoming part of an accessible database for historians. In my weekly meetings, I discuss the findings with Mr. Haley, and we discuss further avenues of research, interesting trends, and unexpected occurrences in the records. Thus far, I am pleased with my progress in getting through the records and finding entries of interest. I have discovered numerous interesting accounts in the records. In particular, I found five cases of conspiracy to commit insurrection (three during the War of 1812) and five cases of people arrested for attempting to help enslaved persons escape.

As an archives, a major part of the mission of the MSA is to make research more accessible for the public and for researchers. My position has indeed helped to do so with part of my responsibility, after completing the first set of the 1811-1818 entries, being to help create the groundwork for the database which it would eventually be shared within. The basis, of course, comes from the transcribed entries which I have neatly recorded in Excel for ease of transition. However, the more unique aspect of this was that my feedback on how the database should be laid out was valued and sought due to my in-depth understanding of the records already prepared. The database will be created at a later date, but unfortunately it may not contain all the information within the entries. As this is the case, I provided information and suggestions on the categories to focus the database on which might be of greater importance for researchers. The first of which was to record the categories which might be able to showcase racial and economic inequity in prison. This would be able to be told by examining the complexion category for information on race, which could then be compared to the sentence and pardon categories to gain a better understanding of how race may have played a role in unequal sentences in prison. For economic inequity, I suggested that the occupation category would be most important as any comparison between occupation and sentences, or pardons may be able to show inequity due to the economic conditions of inmates. The third major category which was of most interest for placing into a database would be those which show how prisons may have benefited from the labor of inmates, which can be best investigated through examining the occupation of someone in prison compared to that of their prior occupation.

Furthermore, I have had the opportunity to learn and to network with the Maryland State Archives. I have been learning skills with transcription and research with this internship. Transcription is of course the majority of the work, and I have been learning ways to be more efficient, to read 19^th century handwriting, which is oftentimes not in the best condition. I have also furthered my research skills by working with the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I have conducted research into Maryland lynchings and located a rough potential location where one man, John Simms, was lynched outside Annapolis. I discovered this using maps from the time in conjunction with the clues from newspapers, which gave information like proximity to railroad, property owner, and proximity to the local landmark known as the Three Mile Oak.

Regarding networking, I have had the opportunity to meet with many people at the Maryland State Archives. Working with Chris Haley, the Director of the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland Program, has been helpful for networking. I also have meetings with Emily Squires who is the Director of Research, Reference, Education and Outreach. Outside of those who I typically interact with, I am most excited for the opportunity to meet with the former State Archivist Dr. Edward Papenfuse this Friday. I look forward to being able to meet him virtually to discuss my internship project and my investigations into the prison records and Maryland lynchings. He has left a lasting impression on the MSA and has contributed much to its growth into the institution it is today, so I am definitely grateful to meet him and to hear his perspective on the project.

Oral Historian for the 20th Anniversary of the Joseph Beuys Tree Partnership | Hannah Balik Post Two

 

The bulk of my responsibilities were, of course, collecting the oral histories. That sounds simple, but there is a lot that goes into the process, both before and after actually sitting down and pressing the record button. First, Sandra and I had to finalize who we wanted to interview, and then the harder part- actually getting in contact with them, getting them to agree, and scheduling a time to meet up. Especially with the state of the pandemic over the summer, we didn’t want to put anyone in danger. 

Once an interview was scheduled, I would spend hours researching the person. I would look through the records that Sandra gave me access to, regarding the project. I also just familiarized myself with who this person was outside of this project - what they were doing twenty years ago, and what they do today. All of this information I gathered helped me tailor each interview to the individual I was interviewing. Being able to adapt your interview questions to the individual you are interviewing is an important skill, as it keeps the interview feeling personal, rather than robotic. 

Sandra and I set up a makeshift sound booth in the CADVC offices for interviews, lining the walls with thick blankets to curb any echo. This studio was an awesome space, although I ended up doing about half of the interviews off-campus, with the majority of those being outdoors. After each interview, I would upload the audio file into Google Drive, as well as my personal hard drive. Then, I would download it into the software Trint, which Sandra purchased for this project, very kindly. It is a transcribing software, the first time I’ve used one of this kind. Honestly, it was awesome! I’ve spent days transcribing interviews before so it was really helpful to just have to double-check the transcript after the computer did its work. Of course, the program isn't perfect, but it is a lot faster than doing it manually. After finalizing the interview’s transcript, I would write an abstract for each interview for the finding guide. I also wrote about two paragraphs for the finding guide, describing the original project, as well as the 20th-anniversary project. 

I ended up interviewing ten people, which I think is a good number in only three months. The people ranged from the higher-ups in the granting organization that gave the money to the CADVC for these projects, to park representatives, and UMBC staff. I have never interviewed so many people for one project, and I loved it. Storytelling is such a great way to connect to people and I loved learning about UMBC and the inner workings of Baltimore City community planning. I found it very satisfying when I would ask someone a question they didn't know the answer to, would tell me to ask someone else, and then when I asked that person, they would know and tell me. It was like a (really slow) game of tag. I had also never used a real recorder before, only my phone or computer. I was lucky enough to be able to borrow a professional personal recording device from Dr. Meringolo, which helped the process greatly, in addition to giving the interviews better sound quality. 

In post three I will discuss future plans for this project, and the skills and lessons I will be taking with me from this internship into my career in Public History.