Week 2 Blog

This week, we continued our training with transcribing and metadata. I completed the transcription practice before the meeting on Wednesday and reviewed the articles. The practice was a good review. During the meeting, we had a Microsoft Teams exercise in which we created our own folders and added images within them. After, we had a metadata exercise to practice the metadata sheets. It was good to have a refresher on the sheets after not making one for a semester, but once I started, it came back to me naturally. The object I chose was my freshman year of high school band participation certificate. I believed it would be a good pick because it reminded me of working on my last internship, in which there were certificates from class reunions from classes in the 1970s. It included a copyrighted stamp of the band's logo, as well as the year, and signatures from my old band director and the old principal. My peers would share books, postcards, photo-ops, and their own artifacts that they had collected, such as an old watch and a statue of a Hindu god. I always enjoy seeing what other people are excited to show, and it was fun to learn about people's interests. Next week, we are going to meet in person in order to learn about using scanners. This will be the first of many field trips, and I am glad that I will be able to participate in more in-person events. 

After the first meeting, there was a second meeting in my group to discuss the schedule for the rest of the semester. We discussed our ideas for the exhibit, which we all agreed on, making sure that every group could feel a part of looking back in the history of Central Florida, so that they are not underrepresented. We were given readings to look over the ideal way to create an exhibit until our next meeting. The main concept that stood out to me was the negatives that could happen within the exhibit itself, such as the hazards that could come with it. There could be incorrect environmental conditions, pests could infiltrate the artifacts, and destroy them (3). I haven’t given much thought to preservation based upon outside factors that do not count on human error, or destroying on purpose. I believe that working in this exhibit with researching and floor planning, it will give me more experience in creating exhibits with donated objects.

Creating an exhibit #1- at the start: Planning, themes, & interpretation. (n.d.-a). https://vermonthistory.org/client_media/files/Discover/VHS-Exhibit-Worksheets.pdf