Post #8 - Looking Back on an Incredible Summer at MDHS
With August wrapping up and September quickly approaching, my final week at MDHS has officially come to an end. As I look back on the past four months, I am filled with gratitude for the experiences, opportunities, and lessons I have gained throughout my time with the Society. This summer has given me the opportunity to explore many different aspects of museum and heritage work, and perhaps more importantly, to discover just how many different roles and responsibilities go into preserving and sharing a community’s history. From exhibitions and public engagement to collections management, historical research, and administrative work, I have been fortunate enough gain hands-on experience in every avenue of museum operations during my four-month contract.
One of the many rewarding parts of my summer was getting involved in exhibition work at the Blockhouse Museum. I had the opportunity to participate in the planning, design, preparation, installation and setup of several exhibits at the museum. Seeing an exhibition progress from an initial plan/idea into something that visitors were interacting with was an invaluable learning and rewarding experience. Public engagement was another important part of my work as I designed and produced several educational tools to support pre-existing exhibits. These tools improved the accessibility of many of the Blockhouse’s most popular exhibits and gave visitors a chance to interact and learn more about historical material from their own community. I also had the opportunity to design and implement a travelling exhibit along with accompanying interactive materials which allowed me to think about how heritage organizations perform public outreach and how material can be presented outside of the traditional museum environment to reach a broader audience.
A significant portion of my summer was dedicated to collections management. This included accessioning and cataloguing artifacts, condition reporting, photography and learning to work with the PastPerfect collections management system. I was also fortunate enough to learn how policy and practice intersect when deaccessioning objects from a collection. One of the larger projects I was able to assist in was the complete re-organization, updating, and cleaning of the MDHS archives and associated collection space. While this was painstaking work, it was incredibly rewarding to see the difference that careful organization can systematically change the functionality and accessibility of a collection. Working directly with the collections also gave me a much deeper appreciation for the responsibility heritage organizations have in caring for the objects under their stewardship.
Of all the areas I worked in this summer, historical research may have been the most extensive. Perhaps my biggest research project has been the work I began on a future book celebrating the remarkable residents of Merrickville. As part of this project, I researched and wrote more than thirty individual biographies of people connected to the community. This has been an especially meaningful project because it has allowed me to look beyond artifacts and exhibitions and explore the lives of the people who helped shape Merrickville's history.
Lastly, my experience at MDHS was not limited to hands-on museum work. I also had the chance to participate in regular collections committee and executive board meetings. Attending these meetings provided an entirely different perspective on how a historical organization functions. I was able to see firsthand how different groups within a single organization work together, communication, and support one another in pursuit of common goals.
Although my four-month contract has officially come to an end, I am very happy to say that this isn’t quite goodbye. I have enjoyed my time with the Society so much that I have decided to stay on indefinitely as a volunteer. Moving forward, my primary project will be completing the writing of the Remarkable Residents book. I will be continuing to work on the project alongside my final two semesters at Algonquin College. When I began this position four months ago, I hoped to gain practical experience in the museum field. I certainly accomplished that, but I gained so much more than I initially expected. I developed new skills, discovered new interests, met wonderful people, and gained a much deeper appreciation for the work involved in preserving and sharing local history.
I am incredibly grateful to everyone at MDHS who gave me the opportunity to learn, contribute, and be part of the Society this summer. The experience I have gained will stay with me as I continue my studies and work toward my future career in the heritage and museum field. So, while my summer position may be coming to an end, my journey with MDHS is just beginning.