Mark Ellingson Collection

So instead of working on the other projects I was considering earlier I'm planning on working with the Mark Ellingson Collection in the RIT Archives. Mark Ellingson was the fifth president of RIT and was president during some very important changes in the institution, namely the move from downtown Rochester to the Henrietta campus as well as when NTID became part of the institute. However I have not yet had a chance to check out the collection to really get a grasp as to what I will be working with. I have an appointment with the archivist Becky Simmons but until I actually get to see the materials I'll be working with and what I'll be doing with them I'm just not quite certain of the trajectory of my project. At this point I need to do more research on the presidency of Mark Ellingson to help me generate ideas leading up to my visit to the Archives.

Respose to Readings

The readings that have been assigned to us to read in the Research Methods class for the past five weeks have been very valuable in helping me see just how to set up a thesis and develop a research question and my ideas in a clear and cohesive fashion. In fact, the article by Whitney Baker about bumper stickers really helped me understand a lot more clearly just how important it is to make my paper a cohesive whole. The biggest problem I found with that article was that though Baker states in the abstract that she will talk about preserving bumper stickers very little is mentioned about preservation throughout the paper until the conclusion, which just basically states that there needs to be more research before it can be written about. However the paper would have been a good cohesive whole without talking about preservation methods in the abstract, which really proved to me that a very specific and truthful abstract are really important to the creation of a good paper. (1)

The readings have also showed me just how varied and specific many thesis style articles are. Everything from work in collections, education, digitization, and informatics are there as well as many people working off a specific idea, such as the garbage plate or bumper stickers. However no matter how varied one thing is always needed in an article such as this, and that is that the author needs to pull from the writings from their field of study to help place the ideas in the article within the larger conversation of the field. This means that all authors need to research what has been previously done in the field and work off of that knowledge to create a paper that is a different look at the topics than the literature that has come before. It is only through this process that one can write a paper that can make a meaningful contribution to the literature of the museum field. The article by  Volker Kirchberg and Martin Trondle about visitor studies made that especially clear to me because they didn't really have very much previous literature to work off of on this topic, at least compared to other topics in the museum field, so they worked off of what little they had as much as they could so that they could help contribute more to the field. (2)

1) Whitney Baker. "Soapbox for the Automobile: Bumper Sticker History, Identification, and Preservation." Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals, no. 3 (2011): 251-270

2) Volker Kirchberg and Martin Trondle, "Experiencing Exhibitions: A Review of Studies on Visitor Experiences in Museums," Curator 55, no. 4 (October 2012): 435-452.

Thinking of a Project

So I'm still not sure what I want to do for my thesis project. Part of the problem is that I'm still not sure weather I want to get into collections or education. On the education side projects like working on the digital exhibits and other educational activities with Rochester Voices looks interesting to me. I also might be interested in working with Strong on their visitor study but I'm not sure. However, on the collections side I'd be interested in projects such as working with the Urban Renewal Scrapbook Collection. At this point I'm not sure though so I need to think a little longer about my options.

Heather Clarke's Introduction

When I first came to college at RIT I wasn't sure what I wanted to do for my career and for my first year I was a chemistry major. Very quickly I realized my mistake because I had a difficult time and really didn't have the passion for the field of chemistry that I originally thought I did so I moved on and looked elsewhere around the college for a good fit.

It wasn't until the middle of my second year, after a year of searching for a program I had a passion for, I came across the Museum Studies program at RIT through a friend who was in the major. After a brief explanation from my friend I was immediately interested and by the end of the year I became a student of the program.

I have always had a passion for history, artifacts, and education and I also have discovered more of a love for art than I ever knew I had before joining the program. I also love the fact that the goal of a museum is to help people learn and understand the topics that they cover as well as researching and finding out more and more everyday about the artifacts in their collections. However I also don't exactly know where I would want to work in the institution of the museum, as I am currently trying to decide weather to focus on collections or education.