Stories in Storage

Photo: The exterior of the Howard County Center for African American Culture building

    Last semester, fall of 2025, I was hired along with two other students for an intern position with the Howard County Center for African American Culture. The hiring process was long, but not complicated. I was initially denied the internship, but they reached out to me about a month and a half later and asked if they could interview me to see if I could join the team. It ended up being less of an interview and more of a meeting to ask me when I could start. 

There wasn't much information about what the internship would have me do except for the position description in the initial email. All it said was that there had been a flood in 2021 that meant they needed to rapidly remove the museum's collections out of the building, and that now they were looking to recatalogue everything. I would be taught how to handle, record, and catalogue museum collections, which was the exact area of museum studies that I was interested in learning more about. After the interview, I joined the other two interns for an onboarding meeting and found out that the work hadn't started yet. We met once in November to become acquainted with the museum space and learn more about the center, and then once in December to start learning the hands-on skills before the holidays. I learned quickly that since the center was largely run by volunteers, everything took a little longer than usual to get started. 

The Howard County Center for African American Culture has an abundance of fascinating artifacts, books, documents, music, and more, a large portion of which sat unorganized in their upstairs storage closets. My internship supervisor, Dr. Kyla Cools, introduced us to the space, the artifacts, accession numbers, and Past Perfect, the museum collection software that we would be using to record all of the items. In January, after winter break, we all returned to the center to begin working consistently. 

 

History in Three Dimensions

Jake Marino

 

 Photo: Direct Dimensions employee using LiDAR to capture the Three Soldiers Vietnam war memorial statue in Washington, D.C.

    This semester I am lucky enough to be interning at a company called Direct Dimensions located in Owings Mills, MD. The company was started by the owner Michael Raphael in the mid-1990s as a metrology company that specialized in digitizing measurements of real-world objects for use in applications like CAD software, and over the years they became one of the premiere companies in the field of 3D scanning. The level of capture they can process is measured in microns at the most advanced level, and they use this skillset for everything from capturing for visual reference to capturing for exact replication and restoration. They have departments focused on specific types of capture, but my position is in the cultural heritage section of the company that works with artwork and historical artifacts and places. They are known very well in this domain due to their high level of technical expertise, doing scanning work for the National Parks Service, the Smithsonian and many other museums all over the country to preserve significant artifacts and aid in restoration as well as digitize items for public display on the internet and information kiosks in the museums themselves.

    My position initially was working on messaging in the cultural heritage space. This came about in a conversation I had during my interview where I talked about how important I thought the work they do is, and over the course of the meeting I laid out some ideas I had regarding working with museums and online institutions like Wikipedia to make scans of important cultural items more accessible. I am still doing that work but the company is inherently technical, so they have allowed me to do some exploratory work on that side as well. I have been able to see what they do for their process, from scanning and taking pictures, to processing of the raw data, to creating and cleaning up models, to presentation and even fabrication. It is incredibly interesting and overall, just super cool from every direction. I’m excited to see what I get to work on and to just be in this space as a preservationist, it’s a great opportunity in a field that most people probably don’t really think about but has very wide applications and huge future potential. 

Supporting Community History & Heritage

 

            My ultimate takeaway from my experiences interning for Todd’s Inheritance Historic Site is twofold. Firstly, learning how to conduct research, cataloging artifacts, and handle delicate items with very little support, knowledge, resources, or guidance is a tremendous endeavor. While the team of volunteers at Todd’s provided as much support as possible to my work, most of the project was carried out with very little oversight. This kind of experiences forces a researcher to pick up skills ad hoc and improvise when necessary; having the responsibility of handling and identifying family heirlooms so they can more accurately be presented for the public’s enjoyment is a serious task that must be treated with a solemn respect. Secondly, I have come to truly understand and appreciate the struggle involved in community-supported museums, archives, and historic sites like Todd’s Inheritance. The stewards of sites like Todd’s do not have access to vocational training on archival administration and material handling from accredited universities, expensive climate controlled environments, extensive archival records detailing the history of the property, or large financial investments from state resources or intellectual organizations. However, they make do with what they have access to and they do a tremendous job of respecting the property and materials’ histories while also creating an extremely accessible and welcoming environment for the general public to visit and learn about their community history and cultural heritage. Small, volunteer-run sites are invaluable to the preservation of community history as they ultimately will always have the best interest in their preservation since they have virtually no ulterior motives. I look forward to continuing my work collecting, itemizing, cataloging the historic items housed at Todd’s as a volunteer and supporting this small slice of preserved history.

Todd’s Inheritance also provides demonstrations, re-enactments, and lectures that provide opportunities for community interaction with the history, as well as improvement of accessibility to the general public. This photo shows the volunteers presenting a demonstration on Defenders’ Day to commemorate the Battle of North Point and the siege of Baltimore in 1814.

Bare Bones and Unknowns

 

            Given the extreme lack of support provided to the volunteers working to preserve and maintain the property and all the artifacts contained within, the work I was conducting proved to be quite challenging. The state government provides little financial support or vocational training in historic preservation, so they rely heavily on community volunteer work and visitor donations. Due to these restrictions, there has been virtually no organized collection or catalog to itemize and record all the artifacts that they are in possession of. This was the primary challenge in my work as they could only provide limited records or understanding of the objects I was cataloging, which is no fault of their own since they are all undertaking this herculean effort purely out of their generosity and their passion for cultural heritage. Many objects either had production line stamps detailing the maker and year of creation or that information was already known by the volunteers through the aid of the surviving Todd family members. However, some items required background research to ascertain the approximate era/year of origin and who the maker was. This involved examining every possible surface, texture, or material of an object for tiny details, and some of these objects were very large and heavy pieces of furniture. For example, one item that required this approach was a Sentinel Analog Wall Clock with no observable significant details and relatively little knowledge provided by the volunteers; I was able to identify it as a Sentinel series produced by Sessions Clock Co. in 1911 through following the details I was able to observe. Additionally, some of these objects were in very poor condition, due to wear over years of use or mishandling, which hampered efforts in identifying them from deterioration of details and weakened their structural integrity.

Three Hundred Years On The Patapsco Neck

            During the summer of 2025 I was given the wonderful opportunity to intern at a very small historic site in an isolated corner of Baltimore County, Maryland. I worked as a paid intern at Todd’s Inheritance Historic Site which is a colonial-era farmstead located at the very end of North Point Peninsula near Fort Howard. This area has a rich history rooted in the War of 1812 and specifically the siege of Baltimore and Fort McHenry. The three-story farmhouse was originally rebuilt in the 1820s after being burned down by the British invasion in 1814, but the area was first settled by the Todd family in 1664. The property was held in an unbroken line of succession for over three hundred years until in 1975 it was sold off and fell into serious disrepair. In 1997, the house was saved from sale and possible destruction by a coalition of community members dedicated to preserving the historic significance and cultural heritage of the property, and in 2001 the house was awarded a Historic Site designation by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and kept under the stewardship of a group of dedicated community volunteers. Over my three months of work, I collaborated closely with these volunteers to identify, organize, catalog, and digitize over 200 various items on display in the house spread across four different rooms. This detailed work involved categorizing the items, determining their provenance, their year/era of origin, the materials they consist of, as well as the size dimensions of each item and photographic documentation. Many items originated from the Todd family heirlooms and thus had to handled with utmost care and respect as a member of the Todd family still resides locally and is heavily involved in the project of historic preservation and documentation.

Reflection on Internship

     I came into this semester after being out of college for nearly 4 years. In the time spent out of college, I I focused on developing vocational skills to bridge my scholarly interests and my desire to do field work in preservation. Taking the time to reflect on my work while completing the requirements for the internship has allowed me to be more connected with the work I do. Despite the exciting nature of my work, it's still a 9-5 job. The general rigors of construction, early mornings, working in terrible weather, wear on a person. However, being able to record and share information about the work has been an exciting and engaging prospect. I hope to be able to share more challenges and triumphs of projects I engage in going forward with more likeminded colleagues. 

    The hardest part about this internship has been time management between the other courses. As I said before, this is my returning semester to college, as well as my last, so I am out of practice when it comes to college work. Due to poor planning on my part, I never completed my lab course requirement and was only able to get into a GES lab course. Working on the internship simultaneously with three other courses proved to be more work than I expected. Despite this, I'm thankful for the Public History department to allow my current job at Hestia Restoration to be included in the internship. Mathew Benning, the owner and my boss at Hestia, wants to establish a link between the history department at UMBC as a potential option for more interns. I believe it would be an exciting learning experience for both us at Hestia and the students willing to get their hands dirty doing some real restoration!

Reflecting On My First Internship Experience

Last week, my internship at the B&O Railroad Museum concluded and it has been a long journey of many different types of experiences, good, bad, ugly, and insightful. It showed me what it is that curators do on a day-to-day basis as well as the difficulties of being an intern in the public history field today. My internship at the B&O Railroad Museum has helped me build up my existing skills and learn practical skills that will help me for future internships and professional opportunities.

In my freshman year for a first-year seminar course, I wrote a final paper that focused on a career path I want to pursue after college, its job market and salary, educational requirements, and what does it mean to do that job. From that paper, I had an inkling of curatorial work being 90% office work, a percentage of exhibition development, and a percentage of networking for the department, museum, and object acquisition. And through my internship it has turned out to be pretty accurate and more intensive for the intern as much of the office work gets given to you and the more hands on, developmental tasks to the museum’s curatorial team. The human labor aspect of both groups ultimately comes together for a final project but it’s underestimated how much of being a curator is behind the scenes, and rather boring. I am hopeful I can have a career as a curator that I can make it my own or feel like it’s my own within its constraints.

Coming into my internship I had experience writing labels and doing research for labels. This internship put these skills to the test and put into perspective the sometimes specific or niche information that certain museums require for their label information. I had more experience with artwork labels which allow for a more flexible description of the artwork as it can take on many different forms depending on what you want to focus on (formal qualities, the artist, art movement, theme, relationships, etc.). At the B&O Railroad Museum where it focuses on B&O railroad history and railroad history in general that luxury is limited as history and object context are more important. It was a task to get used to as researching information and understanding it to put it into label form was challenging for me as someone with little prior knowledge of railroads, art specific material culture experience, and where to look for information I am lacking with to help clarify the label’s information. The Assistant Curator was able to guide me through the process that was more aligned with history and material culture research, label writing, and questioning to uncover and better understand a method of working with (non-art) objects that can succeed in various contexts.

Overall, my internship at the B&O Railroad Museum has been a challenge and a fruitful experience that has strengthened my skills in writing, research, and exhibition development through my projects with the upcoming B&O no. 3316 “Washington,” the American Freedom Train (AFT) exhibit, and other smaller side projects with object descriptions, accessing archival materials, and cleaning up existing exhibits in the museum. This is an experience that I would not have had if not for blindly applying to a museum outside of my field of study and emphasizing my prior skills I built up through course work at UMBC and in my study abroad program. And I have walked away with a valuable memory, experience, and opportunity to add to my resume.