Anthracite Heritage Museum 6/19/2022-6/21/2022

Kendall Williams

This week was a short week because of the Juneteenth holiday. Unfortunately, I was sick this week so I did miss some time. However, I was able to come in to help finish up the inventory of the oral history collection that we were working on last week. I also got to go over the details of our tour at the Iron Furnaces, and I re-read over the book that we were given to learn more about them. I unfortunately missed going to Eckley this week because I was feeling unwell, but I will be back during the weekend to give the tour with Ethan, so I will still have the opportunity to do some work outside of the museum.

Anthracite Heritage Museum 6/13/2022-6/16/2022

Kendall Williams

This week Ethan and I worked on a project of cataloging oral histories from a local project by Professor Robert Wolensky.

The collection was of oral histories from locals, such as miners, families of miners, politicians, and union members. I was excited to catalog the collection because it gave me the chance to read through some of the oral histories, which is something that I have not had the opportunity to do very much before. I found interesting interviews with political activists, former miners, those who had family members die in mine disasters, and more.

Together Ethan and I went through the boxes and cataloged them, which took time because there were multiple boxes to go through, each filled with folders. The interviews were over decades; they went from the 60’s up until the early 2000’s.

This week we also began to prepare for an upcoming Iron Furnaces tour. Ethan and I will give a tour together to a small group, so we researched the Iron Furnaces and made a visit there to learn more about them. It was helpful to visit them beforehand so I could better visualize how they would have ran and what they would have looked like while they were in operation. It made reading about them more understandable and made me feel better prepared to give a tour. I was also excited that I will get to do some public facing work, as I have very limited experience in that field.

Anthracite Heritage Museum 6/6/2022-6/9/2022

Kendall Williams

I started my first week back at the Anthracite Heritage Museum for the summer. This summer, I am working with another intern who was taken on at the museum, so we will be able to collaborate on larger projects.

Because it is our first week, we had a sort of orientation to get adjusted to work there. For the first day, I did online training as mandated by the state for employees. For the next few days, I had the chance to help put newly accessioned items into Argus, the cataloging program used by the PHMC. This is something I had done in my internship in the spring, but I appreciated being able to do it again to get a reminder on how the process works and to help the other intern, Ethan, learn how to use the program.

On Wednesday, we went to Eckley Miner’s Village. I had never been to the site before, nor have I ever worked at a historical site, so I was excited to learn that we would be going weekly as part of our internship. We got to tour the village and see the storage areas for artifacts. We got to view a show house that is interpreted as an average 1950’s home in Eckley. We spent the rest of the day cleaning the artifacts in the house.

I was excited to come back to the museum and my first week had already allowed me to expand more on my previous internship. I am excited to continue to work both at the museum and Eckley, as I think it will give me a well-rounded educational experience.

Anthracite Heritage Museum 5/9/22-5/11/22

Kendall Williams

This was my final week at the Anthracite Heritage Museum for my spring semester internship. This week, I helped in working on the exhibit for the Lackawanna County Fair. John and I found graphics for each display panel and printed them, allowing them to dry before we mounted them onto foam core. We trimmed the graphics and adhered them to the foam core, so that they later could be attached to the display. This week was slower than other weeks, but I am happy to be returning again in June for a summer internship at the Anthracite Heritage Museum.

I have learned a lot from my experience so far, and I enjoy being able to do hands-on work that allows me to experience firsthand how a curator position is at a small museum. I enjoyed working with the collection and learning how to use Argus, and I also was able to use a lot of practical skills during my time there. I am excited to continue my internship, as it will allow me to build further on the foundation we have created throughout this spring semester. I am also excited to have the opportunity to work with other interns, as I feel collabrative work is something that I likely will experience often in my career in the future. This intership has solidified my interest in working in a museum, and I hope that I can continue to learn from my upcoming experience this summer.

Anthracite Heritage Museum 5/2/22-5/4/22

Kendall Williams

This week I began by working in Argus, using it to update web descriptions and titles for artifacts in the collection. I worked with the written accession sheets for about 100 fossil artifacts that are in the collection. I used the information on them to first check to see if the description was entered correctly, and then used the artifact’s decription to create a web description that would be accessible to the public. Later on in the next week, I went through and did some minor editing to the web titles and descriptions.

I also helped to catalog a group of journals that would be going into the museum’s library. I entered each journal into the library catalog, making sure that the edition, issue, and year were all correct. Later, I organized the journals chronologically and moved them to their location on a shelf in the archives.

I enjoyed doing this work because it makes later use much easier, and should someone need acces to the journals, we will know exactly where they are an what issues we have. Using Argus to make web descriptions makes artifacts more accessible and allows the public to use them, which is beneficial in allowing the local community to have access to information to become more educated about local history.

Anthracite Heritage Museum 4/25/22-5/1/22

Kendall Williams

This week my project was to help with research for a small exhibit that would be displayed at the Lackawanna County Fair this summer. I read about the beginnings of the Anthracite Mining Industry and worked to create a timeline of important events about the industry and its foundations.

I enjoyed having the opportunity to research information about the Anthracite Mining Industry, as it is something I have never learned about on my own before. While I do now know much more from my time interning, I still appreciated the opportunity to read about it myself and to note important events that shaped the industry.

I also had the opportunity to help on the weekend with a group of geneaologists who were looking for information about their ancestors who worked in mines in the Anthracite region. We assisted them by providing them with access to books detailing mine reports, and we helped to look for maps for specific requests any of the researchers had. I enjoyed being able to work with the public more, even if it was for a shorter time, as it gave me more insight to how a curator helps to fulfill their role in helping the public to find information.

Anthracite Heritage Museum 3/21/22-3/23/22

Kendall Williams

My project for this week was to accession a group of items donated to the museum from a local family. This collection of items was particularly interesting because it pertained to the COVID-19 Pandemic. There were items such as toilet paper, hand sanitizer, masks, Clorox wipes, anti-microbial spray, and other items that would have been in demand in the early stages of the pandemic.

I was responsible for accessioning all the items, meaning I wrote descriptions, assessed the quality of the item and if there was any damage to it, its measurements, and its relevance to the collection. I enjoyed this process, as it was somewhat different from cataloging a stand alone item. I worked to create a digital description for the collection to explain the use of the items, the relevance, and how / when it was used. I also took photographs of the items to upload to the PHMC’s digital collection management system for others to be able to view and use.

I enjoyed working with these items, and it was interesting to catalog something with historical preservation in mind that to me only happened somewhat recently. I think collections like these will become very important in the near future, as more people will not have experienced living and working through the pandemic. I also enjoyed being able to accession a group of items on my own, as I had only done the somewhat simpler task of accessioning single items before. This was a wonderful hands on learning experience for me and made me more confident in assessing and describing artifacts.

Anthracite Heritage Museum 3/28/22-4/7/22

Kendall Williams

In these two weeks my project was to inventory a large collection of research files containing notes, photographs, and other paper materials from Robert Wolensky. He did research at the Anthracite Heritage Museum while writing a book about the coal mining industry in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Due to the sheer size of the collection, this took me quite a few days to complete. I cataloged each individual folder and its contents. The collection included photographs, notes, book pages, newspaper clippings, photograph negatives, film, and more. I detailed what each folder included and the subject matter in the inventory list so that later on, should someone request to see a specific part of Wolensky’s collection, it can be easily located.

Much of the information in the collection revolved around the Knox Mine Disaster and similar accidents that occured at other mines. It covered the incident itself, the legal proceedings after, and the memory of the disaster today.

I enjoyed seeing how what the collection at the Anthracite Heritage Museum had to offer and how it was used in Wolensky’s research. It reiterates the importance of collections and collections care, and also demonstrates how useful collections can be when doing research.

Anthracite Heritage Museum 3/14/22-3/16/22

This week I got the opportunity to visit Harrisburg with my supervisor to transfer deaccessioned items and to transfer an artifact to another museum.

We went together first to drop off deaccessioned items. They were tools that were deemed no longer necessary in the collection and were being taken back by the state. We got to see storage facilities of deaccessioned items, items that needed to be transferred, and items from no longer active historical sites.

We then were able to make a stop at the Harris House, a historical site of the former home of the Harris family. There, we dropped off an item that they would be moving into their collection. We also got a tour of the home and learned about the families that had lived there, along with the history of settlers in the area.

It was very helpful to see how other sites are managed and what the official process is for transferring items from one location to another.

I also enjoyed learning about the local history of Harrisburg through our visit to the Harris house, and it was reminiscent of what role the Anthracite Heritge Museum fills for people in our area.

Anthracite Heritage Museum 3/7/22-3/9/22

Kendall Williams

This was my first full week where I was able to use my state computer account, so I finally was able to catalog items in the museum’s online cataloging site. It was a very similar process, as it required all the same information as the physical copy that I had done before, but in some cases it did require more information. There were ways that it needed ot be adapted digitally, such as an online description and title that would be visible to the public to let them know more about the item. I cataloged a few items into the database before moving on to a different project.

I began to work on inventorying paper materials, photographs, and newspaper clippings that had been previously stored on non-acid free posters. I first inventoried all of the items, along with a short physical description of each. Then I cataloged the items as a group into the musuem’s database, along with a short description of the contents, including number of items, subject matter, and time period. Then, I took the items off of the board, labeled them each with a proper accession number, and moved them into acid free folders, which were also labeled and had a description of what was inside. They then were moved into a space in the archives.

I was happy to finally be able to work on the computer, as much of the process for accessioning and cataloging items takes place digitally now. It was helpful to do so manually at first, though, because it gave me a good idea of what to do when it came to the digital version.