Unlike most of my classmates who establish their interest in the museum studies field and then pursue their education, I was put in to the field as a necessity of my ever changing job. After being assigned part-time to the RIT Archive Collections, I discovered that I really enjoyed the work, and decided to get the education required for a degree in Museum Studies so that I would have a better understanding of what I was doing and why I was doing it.
My first assignment in the archives involved packing up 87 boxes of materials in the basement at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at RIT and moving them to the archives. Since then, other students and staff members have had the task of going through the boxes and organizing and sorting the materials.
I've been able to expand the types of projects that I've worked on for the archives in the years following that first project. Currently, I'm in charge of the social media for the archives as well as capturing RIT websites using a platform called Archive-It. Be sure to follow us on Facebook (RIT Archive Collections) and on Twitter (@ritarchives).
(Photo taken by me in celebration of Museum Selfie Day 2017- I'm on the far left next to Becky Simmons (RIT Archivist), Jody Sidlauskus (center- RIT Assistant Archivist) along with some of our student employees)
It's always interesting how we all end up in the Museum Studies field/major! Sounds like yours was a good twist of fate. I'm curious as to what the decision-making behind social media is: what goes into handling a museum or archive's online platforms?
ReplyDeleteWe try to engage our audience even when they're not able to visit us at the archives, feature items from our collections that most visitors may not be aware that we have, celebrate/commemorate significant dates at RIT, etc.We try to switch up between academic, light hearted, comical, and audience engagement style posts so we don't become "stale" and lose our followers interest. The goal is to inform people of our presence, get them engaged with us and keep them engaged with us.
DeleteAs far as what goes in to handling the online platforms; we fairly recently started using Hootsuite which makes posting to multiple platforms at the same time easier and allows us to schedule posts to go out at pre-determined times (even at night or on the weekends if we find that most of our audience is online at those times).
I also find it interesting how you end up doing a lot of different things when working in museums and other cultural institutions! Do you enjoy running the social media for the archives? How does it compare to more "traditional" archives work?
ReplyDeleteI really do enjoy running the social media for the archives. It allows me to get to know what's in our collections (with posts like those that feature a recent acquisition that I may not have otherwise known about as it's not part of my duties). It also allows me to connect with people and departments around RIT and even other institutions around the country. For example, this summer I attended the MANY conference and with ARCHie, was able to make connections with other museums that also have mascots (#museummascotmeetup is a thing!! )
DeleteWhile it may not be considered "traditional" archives work, it's becoming more and more common for museums and archives to have a social media presence and I foresee it possibly becoming another facet of museum work.
It's very cool that you were sort of plopped into a job and found that you loved it! :) I also had an interesting path to museum studies, not finding the major until my third year in college. Working with social media for the archives, what you're doing now is similar to what I hope to do once I graduate! I would love to hear more about what the archives does with social media (how they use it, why they use it, etc).
ReplyDeleteJen, so glad you've found your way to the archives! I look forward to learning more about your project and its relationship between cultural heritage and museums/living history/experiential learning.
ReplyDelete