Week 7 Day 13 (June 24)

So this week will be short and to the point.

On Tuesday I officially finished sorting the last of the Founding Families Collection. I think it is safe to say that 99% of all the information on all the families are in their designated boxes and on the specific shelves that Christine and I chose to store the collection. Christine and I went over a game plan as to how we are going to set up a finding aid for the collection after finding a pretty decent and detailed one in her office. Seriously this museum is like a magical house straight out of the world of Harry Potter. If you ask for something/need anything it will wondrously appear in the last place you expected to find it (I may or may not loudly ask for a brand new car...just saying).

I also did some research this week on how accession numbers work, how to create them for each item and that we need to add said accession numbers to PastPerfect. Since I will not have enough time to do every item in every box I will be sticking to a specific box in the collection that has the least amount of items (trust me it is still quite a few items) which contains information and photographs of two of the founding families. Hopefully if all goes well I will be able to start accessioning items by next week and I have already started adding information to the finding aid.

Also the reason this post includes only the work I did on Tuesday is because on Wednesday, due to a family emergency, I was not able to come in.

Anyways, hope everyone has a fabulous weekend.

-Ambar the History Student

Week 6 Day 11 and 12 (June 17 and 18): Photography for Dummies

So this week was just a little on the complicated and frustrating side. But hey life isn't perfect right? So this week Christine and I decided it was finally time to begin the process of photographing some of the more important documents at the museum. Laura Cepero was gracious enough to come to the museum to give us the guidelines of what the standards of the photos should be like (in case anyone forgot Laura works with RICHES as the Metadata Editor). Last Monday I was able to borrow a camera from the public history department at UCF and got this really fancy Canon camera along with a tripod. In my head I seriously thought it wasn't going to be that hard. Take a few pictures, make sure they weren't blurry and move on.

Yeah, not so much.

Christine thought it would be a good idea if we just practiced a bit so we started off with some Xerox copies of a newspaper that had no other existing editions and honestly no one's really sure where it came from. Any who it was placed on the floor on top of a black poster board. But as Laura played around with the camera's settings (because honestly I had no idea we had to set up the camera, just thought the camera would figure that all out...I'm really not as tech savvy as I thought I was) she also came to the conclusion that the tripod given to me would not allow us to take decent photos of an item on the ground. We also realized the lighting had to be just right for this to work. We didn't have enough lamps laying around so Christine called her husband Dr. French (you all should know him as one of the coolest history professors at UCF) who was kind enough to bring us extra lamps. After we had the light situation fixed we had to admit to ourselves that none of us knew what we were doing with this camera. Christine decided to call her father, Ruben, who was a retired photographer.

Before I go on any further with my story let me just pause here to tell everyone how cool Christine's dad is. He's this adorable, little old man who the moment he walked in the door got all business like and said, "Where's the problem?" I mean he was so interesting, sweet and funny that I had to take him to lunch. You don't meet cool grandfather's like that every day and NOT take him out to eat. He's my BFF he just doesn't know it yet. It's fine though, I'm sure he'll be cool with it.

So anyways, Ruben has all his equipment, camera, tripod, and all these extra parts for his equipment because come on the guy is totally a pro at this. To make a long story a little shorter after using his camera, trying to teach me how to use my camera and using every trick in the book that he knew we could not take a proper photo of the fine text on any of the documents that we used. He spent over an hour with me (as did Laura) trying to get a photo where the print was not blurry when I zoomed in. To say that it was frustrating was an understatement.

After an hour of trying everything, both Laura and Dr. French left, and the only solution I could come up with was to use an iPhone and see if that made a difference. Surprisingly enough, the photo came out perfect. When you zoomed in the letters were not blurry and totally readable. Finally, I was relieved. I decided to take a few more shots and emailed Laura some of the photos to see what she thought of them.

Fast forward to the next day and as excited as I am that we made a breakthrough with these pictures I get an email back from Laura that kind of deflated me a bit. Before I go on in no way, shape or form do I blame Laura. This isn't her fault, she's just following protocol. But first I found out that the photo needs to be at 600 dpi (our photos were no where near that) and it had to be set to .tiff (our photos were still in .jpg). I was definitely disheartening because Ruben and I had worked hard to get a hold of something that would work. Christine and I talked the next day and realized that for now we should wait a bit until we had a better game plan. So on Wednesday I spent the entire day finishing up my work on the database and the collection.

 But you know what honestly it is okay. It was a learning experience. It was also so cool to have a group of people helping me out and that Christine was able to call reinforcements and how they came through for her and I. So thanks to Dr. French for taking time out of his day to come over and bring some much needed light. Thanks to Laura for coming all the way from Orlando to help me out. A really big thanks for Ruben (aka my BFF) for being super patient and not giving up as well as showing me the ropes on how to take a proper photo. And of course thanks to Christine for not leaving me in the dark and leaving me to figure out this mess on my own. Having friends in the right places is always helpful. I definitely learned that this week.

So that's it for now and if you look below you will see some photos I took of the group. Until next week folks.

- Ambar the History Student

The man with the camera is Ruben and the pretty lady in the white top is Laura 

The man in blue is Dr. French and Christine is on his right. They were both reading something and honestly I have no idea what it was. However I'll bet you 10 bucks that it was something probably historical. 

Laura, Christine and Ruben 

Ruben (the BFF) and Christine (no idea what she was looking at)

Week 5 Day 9 and 10 (June 10 and 11): The collection continues

This week I really just buckled down on the collection I started last week. I've narrowed the founding families to eight and while there are other very important families that left their mark on Maitland they came at a later time. Thankfully most of the information about these families were already in their own boxes but as expected there was plenty of information in other boxes. There are also a few families that did not have their own box so that means I will have to A) combine them since there isn't an entire box worth of info for each of those families and B) find boxes and space for them. Another problem is rearranging the specific shelves that I want to use. I want to keep the most important boxes and information about Maitland in one specific area but I don't want to move boxes that are in the way to other areas that can still be deemed as important. In a perfect world the more important boxes would be on the back of the bookshelves (aka where the less important info should be designated) and switch them out with the boxes on the main shelves that could be placed in other areas. Most of the time I'm finding and having to switch both important boxes and less important boxes all within the same space, shelf, or bookcase. It all just feels like a puzzle right now and I'm having to slowly rearrange the pieces so that they fit perfectly together.

On another less confusing note, I was able to go with Christine to one of her meetings. I totally felt important like I was on some official work business. But seriously the cool thing about this meeting was that it was put together by the ITPA, a group that I have seen mentioned and on many awards at the Maitland Historical Museum. Also one of the members of the ITPA (and whose family name has an award named after them) was the grandson of Carl Galloway.If I haven't mentioned it before the Galloway family was very important to the city of Maitland (and also part of my Founding Families Collection). I was unaware that the Galloway family name lived on and that I was meeting a descendant. It was all pretty cool.

I also mentioned that I would be including photos of what the research studio looks like in order to give everyone a better idea of what I'm working with.

These are the two bookshelves I'm always talking about. I did an entire inventory of all the boxes on these bookshelves. Christine already had a "system" going and each side of each bookshelf is a "Case" (starting from left to right is Case 1, Case 2, Case 3 and Case 4). 

Case 2 and Case 3 are what Christine and I deemed as the most important sections of the research library. This is where we want to place the most important information/boxes. The less informative boxes will go in Case 1 and Case 4. That little room in the background is simply used as storage but apparently used to be the bathroom to the house. 

Doesn't look super impressive but what you're seeing here is the collection I've started.

Next week I will begin the process of digitizing by photographing some of the information in the museum. Hopefully all goes well. Until next week.

-Ambar the History Student

Week 4 Day 7 and 8 (June 3 and 4): Phase 2 has officially begun

So this week we really started on the actual collections. Christine and I decided to start with concentrating on the founding families of the city of Maitland. We realized that while all the information (both old and new) about these people were in the research library they were scattered throughout the room. What we aim to do is get all this information in one area on one side of the bookcase, stored between two half shelves (lets say the right side of shelf 10 and shelf 11 for example). We located this collection directly in the middle (the inner side of both bookcases) where the light is the best, and we thought would deem all this information most important. Less important topics or collections will go on the outside of the bookcases. I'll make sure to take pictures to further illustrate my point and where the collection will be held.

Not gonna lie the first day was a little slow going for me since I was doing something totally new. Even though I didn't feel very confident of the work I did thus far, Christine reassured me that it was looking great and we were making great improvement. Towards the end of the day Christine and I made a more detailed game plan since we both know what we are up against now.

I definitely think the toughest part was moving box by box and before making huge changes having to go back to the database so as not to forget where the current location of each box was now at. Also boxes that needed to be moved to make room for this collection couldn't simply be thrown out or taken out. I had to instead temporarily relocate them to another shelf as more and more things got moved around. Of course the tedious problem is that these less important boxes also had to be continuously updated on the database so I wouldn't lose track of them. I think right now my biggest fear is losing track of a random box and the database not being updated. I think as long as I pay attention and try not to rush I'll be okay.

So all of that was Tuesday but on Wednesday instead of my usual hours at the museum I had a meeting with the very sweet and helpful Laura Cepero at RICHES located in UCF. Christine decided that instead of doing one task at a time I could simultaneously create a collection, take pictures of the older documents in the museum to digitize and learn a bit about Metadata. Laura sent me some information on how to scan (if we were using a scanner), what type of high resolution photos to take and how to upload to RICHES. In the end we decided that it would be easier if she sent me a database where I could plug in all the information of each photo I took since I will be taking much more than 10 photos. I learned that this is the beginning stages of Metadata (in this database I have to describe the content of my pictures in great detail). Like I said Laura was super helpful and she seems to be a pro when it comes to all things digital. Hopefully I gain a lot more knowledge from this young lady.

Also before I forget here are the pictures I promised from last week.

This is the mannequin I've been talking about. 

Up close photo of my worst nightmare the mannequin 

One of the headless mannequins at the front of the museum. I actually don't find this one creepy and find the dress (19th century at least) to be very beautiful.

So that's it for this week. I've learned a ton of information this week and the best part is that I'm learning it as I go and getting real experience in the field of archiving. Until next week folks!

-Ambar the History Student