One Docent's Reflections

The LHS is powered by many different people who help turn the wheels of our organization. One of the most important groups of people turning the wheels are our docents. Our docents serve as the front-line of the museum, greeting our visitors and giving tours when we're open.

One of our docents, Ireene Ohlmacher, related an interesting front-line experience to me and I asked her to share her experience for the blog. Enjoy!

On Sunday, March 28, I worked as a guide in the Museum. As you all know, sometimes we are overwhelmed with visitors and sometime - well, it's hard not to take a nap. This Sunday I had several different groups. One had young children who thought that the idea of making collages was the most brilliant thing they had come across in a long time once I explained that they could cut out ANY picture they liked for the collage. At first they wanted them put up, but then they thought it would be more fun to take them home with them.

However, the neatest experience was when a boy scout troop of 12-16 year olds walked in with their leaders. You could just see the look on their faces when they came in - "What a waste! We have to visit a boring old museum." They had come in to get the patches which are available in the gift shop (which I didn't know at the time). I however could not let all those young minds escape me. So, 1st I shanghaied them to give them information about the mill & the house (emphasizing how many people lived in each of the apts and what ages they would have been working at). Then I explained that the idea of this year's exhibit was what makes a community - shared religion, activities, places, the games we all played growing up. THEN I showed them the games & told them - "go ahead - play them, have fun." However, I took the older boys over to the character game, explained it, gave them each a character (no boy wanted to be any of those alien creatures - girls) & we discussed how they might react to a situation in 1910 - then we did 2010. At this point, I told them "why don't you all play it - you don't need me. Just return all the cards, because I get yelled at if they aren't all returned" and I walked away. I stayed in the room to watch (and mediate if necessary). It was fantastic - They proceeded to pick up more cards & (without an adult who might give the "evil eye" if they said the wrong thing) had a great time playing out the game their way. Amazing. Then they decided to play Jacks (the scout leader & I refrained from saying mostly girls played it & we didn't explain the rules). I don't know when I have seen 3 teenage boys have so much fun, - they made their own rules. It was so much fun to watch them play. The younger boys were into yo-yo & Connect Four, but the laughter came from the older ones.

Next time, when they come in, they'll be looking for the games to play and not just thinking another dry museum trip - I hope. I don't know if that's good or bad.

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!