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.

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

 

This summer, I had an internship as an oral historian for UMBC’s Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture. I was interested in this internship because of my interest in public history and oral history. Once I learned that the oral history was going to be reflecting on the twenty-year anniversary of the Joseph Beuys Tree Partnership, which not only had roots on UMBC’s campus, but across Baltimore city, I was interested. Even though I had just spent the first year of my master’s degree online, and thus had never even been on campus, I was excited to be able to tell the story of this piece of UMBC history. The tree partnership consists of four parks paying homage to 20th century German artist Joseph Beuys’ 7000 Oaks Project. The original project’s full name: 7000 Oaks – City Forestation Instead of City Administration consisted of the placement of 7,000 basalt stones with an oak tree planted next to it by a volunteer, in order to encourage the greening of public space, and encouraging all to be participants in their environment. Beuys initiated this project in 1982, but was unable to finish it before he died in 1986. The project was completed by Beuys’ son the year following his death. 

Renee Van der Stelt was the registrar and curator at CADVC in 2000, and had previously had a job at a museum that featured Beuys’ art. When she came to UMBC, she immediately had ideas to incorporate Beuys’ ideas of social sculpture, environmental art, and the expansion of green spaces to Baltimore. It was decided that there would be one sculpture park on campus, which would be the most cohesive and planned park. The other three parks in the project were already existing neighborhood parks with active community member run groups. The parks chosen in Baltimore city were Patterson Park, Carroll Park, and Wyman-Dell Park. These parks only received one rock and a small sign as a nod to the project. Otherwise, the trees were scattered throughout the park, with the main goal being to increase the tree canopy more than create a sculpture garden, like the one on campus. 

Sandra Abbott, the Curator of Collections and Outreach at the CADVC since 2008, had decided to create a project honoring the twentieth anniversary of the project. It was decided that collecting oral histories of the main players in the planning and creation of the parks was in order. Sandra planned on interviewing people across the board who had involvement in the project: from the CEO of the grant organization that made the project possible, to UMBC’s head of Facilities Management, who aided in the planting of many trees on campus. These interviews were intended to be turned into the base of an archive for the project. Sandra explained to me that she has been contacted in previous years by researchers wanting to learn more about the project. However, she had nowhere to point them towards and nothing to give them. She hoped that creating this collection of stories and sharing them on MD-SOAR would allow for both researchers and UMBC students to answer any questions they might have on the project. Sandra also hoped that UMBC art students would be able to take these recordings and animate them into stories, like they have done in the past with other oral histories.

When I interviewed for this position in late May, Sandra was looking for two historians to collect these stories. However, I turned out to be the only one hired. I was nervous about the workload, as Sandra had hoped to record up to twenty oral histories over the summer. I was expecting to be very busy: researching subjects, preparing questions, the interview itself, transcribing, and creating a finding guide with abstracts. Not to mention trying to get into people’s schedules with the pandemic and a very quick turnaround. This would also be my first project of this scale. Even though I had taken Dr. Lanman’s Intro to Oral History course last fall, and used interviews as a research method quite often in undergrad as a Sociology/Anthropology major, I knew that this was going to be quite the undertaking compared to what I have done previously.

In my next blog post, I will discuss the oral history process, and how these expectations compare to reality!

Assistant Librarian Technician at the National Gallery of Art's Vertical Files | Blog #1

Brief Introduction

Working at the National Gallery of Art's Library for ten months so far, it has allowed me to get through most of training and immerse myself further within this research library. In particular, I work as a student assistant under the Vertical Files – this is a collection of ephemera such as exhibition notices, brochures, group exhibitions, invitations and other documents under 50-pages stored in our collection. The nature of these materials is fragile, yet essential to many art historians' research. They are the materials we often discard, throwing them away because their purpose is often temporary. However, they serve as valuable materials which can help researchers learn about artists' exhibitions, how such artists' works were presented and even key us into these documents as artistic works themselves.

What gives significance to the materials within the Vertical Files is that, while there are number that are digitized, the sensitivity of these objects makes for circulating these materials difficult. There is never a guarantee another copy can be found easily so many researchers have appointments to look through the collection themselves. As a librarian assistant here, I manage the collection through adding new materials, labeling them appropriately and filing them away within our various drawers. There are guidelines to label and organize such works, making files for individual artists & institutions who accumulate enough ephemera. And that is only a brief summary of the many responsibilities and tasks I've been put up to!

To put it simply, being a librarian here means making the materials in our collection the most accessible for our patrons. That is the goal when working as a librarian technician at the Vertical Files here!

Goals as a Librarian Technician Assistant

It is important to remember that there are multiple roles that different kinds of librarian serve in a library – especially like the museum library within the NGA. The most common librarian people think of is a circulation librarian. They often check out book materials to patrons, shelf them in their appropriate places among other things. Sometimes, they handle the cataloging of new books, which means creating a digital record for these materials so they can be searched for and tracked within the library system. As you saw previously, the work as a librarian technician at the Vertical Files is noticeably different and it is this difference that interested me in the position. 

The biggest learning goal I had coming into this position, the one that I still maintain even now, is learning more about how a research library functions differently from public libraries. Choosing the National Gallery of Art felt like a dream because it takes a particular focus on Western art (although not exclusive to just this) and this reflects in its library. As a result, the National Gallery of Art's library particularly focuses on the scholarship revolving around this Western art and the Vertical Files goes into this further. As a department within the library, it houses material culture that largely dates from the mid 20th century onward and it has a number of sub-collections such as the Evans-Tibbs collection (primarily focusing on African American Art, local Washington D.C. artists and Turlow Tibbs himself). 

Learning about the differences between these kinds of libraries is important to me because I like to think about how learning spaces are designed. Constructing this spaces and playing a role in building the collection bares much relevance to desire to eventually work as a museum curator. Personally, I believe that organizing information like the Vertical Files' materials has an artful approach to it, that it takes my own personal decision-making to label & file such works accordingly. It means thinking like a researcher and understanding their needs. In analyzing these materials, I am able to think about how they should be categorized, whether these are useful to our patrons and consider whether these materials stand out on their own. Some materials are not simple pieces of cardstock. Some fold, some have pop-out images, others containing digital media, or having text printed on soft tissue paper. Some are press releases, others invitations with the signature & writing of the artist themselves. It's in this way that I have to constantly challenge my ideas of what it means for something to be "rare", for something to be "useful" to a researcher, and most importantly, for something to be considered as valuable enough to archive in this way.

That is one of most important things I've been learning in my employment here. It is the most important thing to me to constantly expand my definitions and worldview regarding such research materials. That, to me, is an art.

Past Projects

Being brief, I have worked on a number of projects in my time here. I have linked Library of Congress name headers to artists who didn't have them.

I have worked on putting together a digital collection on Evans-Tibbs Artists, primarily those featured in David C. Driskell's Two Centuries of Black Art (1976). You can view that here, if you are interested.

I have worked on sorting a shipment of ephemera from the Pace Gallery in New York, labeling and filing them accordingly into our collection before shipping duplicates to the Maryland Institute College of Art. 

I have recently done Vertical Files orientations for our CASVA members.

I have completed shared digital project with the Circulation team, editing book volume' material information., completing 7,843 entries in that time.

Current Projects

Telework

Currently, I am doing research on our Evans-Tibbs artist who have poorly-sourced or under-sourced Wikidata pages. Wikidata is one of the platforms under the Wikimedia Foundation and it provides a structure to the data present on other Wikimedia platforms such as Wikipedia. There are guidelines to sourcing information for these artists' background, namely according to Wikidata's standards.

In addition to this, I am working on an Auction Catalogs' project where I am doing simple edits on auction catalog's MARC records. A MARC (standing for Machine-Readable Cataloging) record is a bibliographic record which describes the material, main + added entries, subject headings and what is it classified as. In particular, I am making these Auction catalogs' place of sale & date of sale fields human readable, and changing their indicators.

In-Person Work

My foremost responsibilities within the Vertical Files are

• labeling new materials into our Artist & Institutional Files, both general & artist/institution-specific folders
• weeding duplicates from the collection to create more space
• returning checked-in files & materials into their original place
• creating labels +  making records for artists and institutions who accumulate enough materials to 'graduate' into their own folder

Maryland State Archives The Legacy of Slavery in Maryland Program: Penitentiary Records- Blog #1

 

   Maryland State Archives Penitentiary Records- The Legacy of Slavery in Maryland

         The internship I am undertaking is for the Maryland State Archives Legacy of Slavery in Maryland Program. While other members of this internship are fulfilling roles in mining and examining census records, I am focusing on the Maryland Penitentiary records. My intern supervisor is Mr. Christopher Haley, the Director of the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland Program. I will be responsible for examining the digitized Maryland Penitentiary records from 1811-1869. I will transcribe these ledgers of inmates to prepare them for a separate database which researchers would then be able to access with ease of use to locate specific areas of interest. In addition, I will need to take note of any trends that I see developing or odd features to entries and discuss it with Mr. Haley, and those of my internship cohort on our Friday meetings. These features are likely among the most important aspects of the internship as recognizing them can open new avenues of research while others can help to explain racial injustice within the prison system. This internship also has a secondary aspect in which I will assist the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission in their task of telling the history of Maryland lynchings and its victims. I will do so by the creation of biographies for those victims.

            I intend for this internship to help further my interest and study of racial injustice in Maryland. My interest was sparked by the current culture facing this country today, with the issues of racial shootings and the disproportionate sentences and number of African Americans imprisoned. These are big issues which are evident within our society and have their roots in the past. I have been able to better understand the roots of racial injustice of the past because of my previous work with two other graduate students on the five known lynching cases of Anne Arundel County, John Simms, George Briscoe, Wright Smith, Henry Davis, and King Johnson. With this internship, I will be able to better understand another element of racial injustice with the prison system directly from primary sources.

            I specifically chose the Maryland State Archives for this internship because I wanted to get to know the people and community of the institution. It seems to be a great place to work, and I have seen that the work that is done there greatly matters. The Legacy of Slavery Program alone seems to be of vital importance to the local community and reconciliation, and it is only one of many projects which the Maryland State Archives is currently researching and investigating. More than this, it is a local institution with a focus on local history, which does attract my attention as I enjoy the idea of helping investigate, research, and write about the local history of Maryland.

The reason I was interested in this internship was because it would focus on the study of racial injustice in the prison system as well as because I feel the internship itself focusses on what I feel is the core of archives. In terms of racial injustice in the prison system in the 1800s, I feel that it is a major, and local Maryland issue which I understand the basics of but not the specifics. This internship would allow me to delve deeper into the lives and stories of those who were imprisoned and to understand the depths of racial injustice during the 1800s. In addition, I personally believe that the core idea of archives which I would be accomplishing would be facilitating future historians by making the records of the Maryland Penitentiary more accessible. By transcribing and preparing the records for use in a database, the records would be able to reach many more historians than before and would be easier to access and search for specific areas of interest. I would be able to shed light on these records, and gain both the benefit of facilitating my own understanding as well as making the records easier for others to understand and access.