An Intern's Perspective

Our Spring Intern, Bethany Hyers is working on helping us organize for our upcoming exhibit on the Laurel Race Track. She has been charged with scanning images from our collection and attaching the files to Past Perfect records. She also has done background research on different exhibits on racetracks.

Here is a personal perspective on how she connects to her work at the LHS:

This spring I am interning here at the Laurel Museum to learn about collections. Currently I am set with the task of helping with the 2011 upcoming Laurel Race Track exhibit by updating records so as to streamline the design process. Despite my childhood love for horses, I am not an avid horse race watcher nor do I have much previous knowledge about the Laurel Race Track specifically. I was given the task of researching past exhibits of race tracks that have been done in other museums and I realized that the Triple Crown is coming up in a couple of weeks (May 1^st to be exact)! This realization made me think of how the Laurel Race Track got other people excited for the races and what those races meant for them. I think that the online research, finding extremely interesting photographs of people at the track, and the realization of the upcoming Derby that increased my personal connection with this project.

The Kentucky Derby is becoming a new family tradition with more and more in attendance each year. My grandmother - the reason for all the excitement - used to bet on Kentucky Derby horses with her boss when she worked in Washington DC. And ever since then she has always had a love of the Kentucky Derby which has slowly become my love as well. It is always on the calendar of family events.

Derby Day. My dad is charged with the duty of making the mint juleps while my grandma prepares herself for the race by wearing her version of a Kentucky Derby hat and watching the pre-show. (Her hat is not as extravagant as the hat worn by the women at the actual derby since it is a sunhat but it does the job.)This hat, a black and white straw fiber hat that reminds me of a casual version of a church hat, always makes it debut on Derby Day.

As the horses are being led up to the gate, my grandma and I choose the ones we are going to shout for. I tend to base my choice more on the name and look of the horse while my grandma uses a more sophisticated process. (I don’t think my horse has ever won except once. Maybe I should consider changing my picking strategy?)

The opening of the gates starts the cheering and shouting for your horse. It is almost like the room holds its breath (if you can forget the shouting) while the race goes. This atmosphere reminds me of a photograph in the collections of a woman holding her binoculars with a look of anticipation and hopefulness toward the track. I feel like that is a more glamorous version of what goes on at my Grandma’s and what I imagine happens every horse race everywhere.

I think I will always have fond memories of my grandma shouting at the TV with her sunhat-Derby hat on for her horse to win. And so as I update Laurel race track records I remember the excitement of Derby Day and how the atmosphere of horse racing is captured by these photographs.

The Beauty of Interns

I believe having interns is one of the best ways one can contribute to the field. I know I learned a lot through internships, all of which helped prepare me for my role at the LHS today.

Since I began working here last June, we've had a number of really great interns. These interns have helped us in a number of ways--creating public programs, organizing collections, and creating interpretive materials. This summer was no exception and in the past 2 weeks or so, we've had a couple of intern projects wrap up quite nicely.

This spring and summer we had a really great intern named Eli Pousson. Eli is a recent MA graduate from the University of Maryland, College Park. He worked with us to put together a shortened version of our walking tour and an accompanying online version. He knows a lot more about computers and fancy programs like In-Design than I do, so it was really great getting to work with him.

With the help of our 2006 Walking Tour, Eli created a shortened tour based on 5 themes. This tour is available both at the Museum and online.

Next, he placed an extensive number of the sites on the 2006 Walking Tour on a map online along with images.

Although we still have a few kinks to work out for the Online Walking Tour, we are now proud to present both of these new products to the public. You can access them online by clicking here. As I mentioned, the Online Walking tour has a few kinks--we're trying to see if we can embed it in the website. But if the link doesn't work for you the first time, try, try again!

Another of our interns this summer was Lauren Hanna. Lauren is an undergrad at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County who wanted to get her feet wet in the Museum field.

She began her work by reading a little about collections work in the Museum field. She learned how to navigate our collections database, Past Perfect, by scanning some images and attaching them to their corresponding catalogue record.

Once she was comfortable with PP, we settled on a project for her that involved inventorying our Historic Kitchen, locating accessioned objects in PP and collecting descriptions of un-accessioned objects from our Education Collection. She took a picture of every single object in the kitchen and matched it with a corresponding description. She then put all of this useful information in a binder.

The binder is now located in the Kitchen as a very extensive gallery guide. It will definitely prove to be useful reading for our volunteers who are interested in learning all about the Kitchen.

So there you have it--2 very important projects completed solely through the efforts of interns.

These are just the two most recent of many interns that the LHS has had help us over the past year.

I am very grateful to all of our interns for their efforts.

Thank you Eli Pousson, Lauren Hanna, Christine Powers, Jessica Bulger, Kevin Alvarez, and Joe Heinen!

The End of the Summer

Today it is 90 degrees out, but I know the summer is winding down at the Laurel Historical Society.

How do I know?

Because things have become much quieter in the past couple of weeks.

Our high school community service volunteers have completed their last day. Our college community service volunteer complete his last day. Our intern finished her project and completed her last day. Our Junior Docents put some final touches on their video projects before our filming day. Even our campers from the City of Laurel Parks and Recreation Camp have finished their visits to the Museum.

During the height of the summer, things were a little crazy. Space (and especially computer time) was limited and young volunteers, interns, junior docents, and our regular volunteers vied for time and space in the Museum. Some days it was hectic.

But almost everyday the Museum was filled with energy--people moving around getting things done.

So what do we have to show for it?

We have an even more organized photograph collection. We have bags of goodies filled for visitors. We have a children's activity booklet available for our younger visitors. We have a new guide to our historic kitchen to let our volunteers know exactly what is down stairs. We have the outline for a video project to be completed in the fall.

More importantly, we have some more dedicated volunteers.

Our intern is returning this fall to continue working on collections project. Our college community service volunteer has asked whether he can return over winter break to help out. Our high school community service volunteer has already called her "slot" for next summer. Our Junior Docents will continue to work on their project in a short couple of weeks.

So even though things are a little quieter here now, I know it won't last for long.

And that's good thing!