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.