This week was my final week at Eckley Miners’ Village. Almost all of it was spent putting together and finalizing the materials for my exhibit to be installed in the lobby of the Eckley visitor center.

I concluded my research (for which I kept a comprehensive log and bibliography) on lighting instrument development in coal mining patch towns in the beginning of the week and completed a write-up and some labels to be printed out for the display. The main label had to be a 300-word maximum summary of the history demonstrated by the exhibit. Specifically, I wrote about two paragraphs totaling to just shy of the word limit, with the first briefly covering the overall scientific development of lighting technology from ancient candles and oil lamps to modern kerosene lamps and electric bulbs. The second focused more so on the application of lighting tech in Eckley, where there was a significant delay in the introduction of new technology. My findings indicated that the majority of lower to middle class Eckley residents in the early- to mid-twentieth century used a wide variety of lights in their homes, with there being significant overlap between archaic oil and gas lamps and newer kerosene lamps, even after electricity was introduced and standardized in the 1930s.

My exhibit reflected these findings, with some examples of the aforementioned technologies pulled from our artifact storage being used to demonstrate a simple timeline. Wednesday was spent printing out my labels in the proper format and pulling the needed artifacts. John and I perused our artifact storage house (the same one I inventoried last month), and we found a few nice examples of the lights I researched, except for a simple candlestick… We have several in our collection, but they are all being used for interpretation in homes or are on display in exhibits.

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The process for making the labels for the exhibit was interesting. They had to be typed up in a large, readable font and then printed onto paper, which was then adhered to white foam board and cut to size. The labels had to follow a very specific format set by the PHMC, which includes the title of the artifact, a date of origin, a brief subtitle (optional, for provenance of the specific artifact’s ownership or use) and/or an interpretive description (optional, explaining general historic use or context), and the donor information with accession (ID) number. Pasting the labels onto the board was not difficult, but cutting the board cleanly and perfectly with a box cutter was a bit challenging; I messed up a few times and had to correct or start over to ensure a clean edge on the labels.

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My exhibit was completed with about an hour to spare before my shift ended. I am very proud of the work put into it, even if it is a small temporary exhibit in the lobby of a museum, considering it is my first mark on the field of public history that I can confidently claim as my own. The process was very rewarding.

My Keystone Internship at Eckley Miners’ Village has been a long, difficult, and sometimes tiring experience, but it has been incredibly fun and valuable in every way, providing me with a wealth of irreplaceable experience I hope to use wherever I wind up working in the future. I’d like to extend an enormous thanks to the wonderful people I got to work with at Eckley who made my time there feel warm and welcoming every single day!