This is it!

Hello, my name is Grace Gallagher. I’m a fourth year Museum Studies major, however, I plan on going into secondary education with a focus in history after I graduate. My interests really focus in on education and history, but when it comes to museums I do enjoy learning about visitor engagement. I spent my summer as a Camp Leader in a Summer Recreation Camp aimed at pre-kindergarten students. I also currently work at before and after school programs for K-5th graders. In my free-time I like to read books in all different genres, binge Netflix, spend way too much time with my friends, and collect as many postcards as possible. 

When it comes to my experience in museums, I’ve only ever experienced them as a visitor. Recently I went to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, experiencing the various exhibitions they had. When it comes to my visitor type in museums it is not what you expect from a museum studies major. I am one of those people that just like to walk through and learn by just looking and enjoying the space and people around me, I am definitely not one to read the labels. Eventually I hope to get an internship in a public history based setting! 

Source: TimeOut

Blog Post #1: The beginning of the end

Hi! My name is Brie and I'm a fourth-year Museum Studies major with a minor on Sociology and
Anthropology and an immersion in Linguistic Anthropology. This class and the rest of the year are going to challenge me in ways I have never been challenged and I am very nervous but hopeful at the same time. I've had three amazing years to learn more about myself and what I want from my career. Although I currently feel more confused about my future than ever, I'm very proud of the experiences I have had and I'm excited to add my thesis process to this list of experiences.

I started off my work experience at RIT in the circulation department at the library. From there I moved on to the RIT Archives and the Bevier Gallery. I have also interned at the Strong National Museum of Play cataloging role-playing games and other toys and games. I loved this internship and it showed me that I want to be the person that works with collections and tells interesting stories about them through exhibit planning. This summer I interned at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum which was an adventure and a half and I loved every moment of it. I had the opportunity to work with multiple departments throughout the summer and see how each department functioned while also participating in a museum-wide move project. If I had to choose the thing I loved the most it would be rehousing objects. Rehousing helped me get a little bit more creative with my solutions and I'm very proud of some of the housings I made for the objects I worked on, especially the spacesuit I spent a few days on. I also got to see some plane moves and learned how to drive a forklift! I can't post any of the photos I took of any of the stuff I worked on but I do have some pics of the Apollo 50 Celebration, and some other summer moments! Feel free to ask about any of the stuff I worked on!

The Saturn V Rocket projected on the Washington Monument. This light show ran for 3 nights and on this night, which was the night of the anniversary, the show was synced up with the original first steps so that Neil Armstrong's boot print emerged at the same moment he first stepped onto the surface of the moon. I cried. 

The Discovery Shuttle at the Steven F. Udvar Hazy Center in Virginia. 

I had to wear Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) when I was shadowing the Large Artifact team in the museum's construction zone. 

The other collections department interns (left to right; Madison, Kiera, and Jordan) and I. These warehouses are apart of the Paul E. Garber Facility in Maryland where about half of the museum's collection is located. 

Blog post 1: a final beginning

Hello! I'm Taylor, and like almost everyone else in this class, I'm starting my final year of my Museum Studies degree at RIT. The past three years have absolutely flown by, and I find myself oscillating between excitement and terror, proud of what I've accomplished thus far, anxious about my future. I think that's fairly typical of any big life change though, and what could be more life changing than writing the longest paper I've written in my life just to top off my college experience?

Over the past three years I've been incredibly fortunate to have lots of different job experiences in the museum field. My first two internships were in archives, sorting, labeling, and boxing hundreds of cameras and Kodak paraphernalia on Ridge Road. During the school year I also worked at the RIT Archives, and at Paley Studios, however my favorite position I've held has to be the internship I had in the programming department of the MIT Museum this summer. Prior to the internship, I'd been leaning towards the public-facing side of institutions more than the archives, but this summer confirmed all those hypotheses I had been making about my future. Helping kids discover how to make a paper circuit, dreaming up events and then bringing them to life, just interacting with visitors daily - all these things made my summer great! Here's some photos from my whirlwind summer:

Cup towers - an architectural challenge!

These men were in Cambridge from Paris for a conference at Harvard, they're all PhD candidates, but that didn't stop them from playing with some toothpicks and gumdrops.

Catherine, me, and our boss, Jenny.

The interns! (Tara, Catherine, Me)

This semester I'm looking forward to exploring programs and how they can enhance a visitor's experience, as well as how those in charge of programs can help the museum to reach a larger audience. I can't wait to go through the year with everyone else in the class and to watch all of your theses grow and develop! Good luck with week 2 my friends!

Research Question, M.Fanton

I am working on the topic of obsolete electronic storage media because...I want to find out the rates in which obsolescence occurs for various types of media in a comparative study...in order to develop a cost an labor analysis that will inform museum and archive professionals about the optimum time frame in which to create preservation copies of existing storage media in their collections.

Based on this (run-on) statement, I have developed a research question:

Are there obsolescence models and patterns that can predict the optimum time frame in which to actively preserve (that is, to make archival copies of) aging storage media, so that archives and museums can take a proactive rather than reactive approach to their preservation?

Dr. Carroll had a series of follow up questions, such as:

1. What is the existing research?
2. Does the existing research need to be updated?
3. Are there exiting models?
4. Will I (the researcher and writer) be providing a series of recommendations?

In class we discussed the potential applications of this research, in which I expressed a desire to take a practical approach rather than a conceptual (only) approach. This will have an effect on my research methodologies and how I design possible recommendations.

In order to proceed, I will need to read current research papers, articles, and books in the field, as well as contact museum professionals at institutions with electronic media in their collections. Dr. Carroll recommended contacting Rebecca Simmons at the RIT Archives. 

I may narrow my research to a specific type of media (audio recordings, for example). Although my initial interest was in the preservation of floppy discs (PC games) and video game cartridges, this presents the additional challenge of confronting the tangled webs of intellectual property and copyright law associated with them. I have decided to take a different path so that my research will apply to a broader range of institutions (collections) and increase its potential future use. 

Code 42 software company has put together the following infographic for their Crashplan web site (an online data backup service?). Not only does it illustrate my topic, it also contains sources for me to further explore (at the bottom), and points to other considerations I will have to address such as the storage of storage media (conditions) and usage (used regularly or barely touched?).

I am not endorsing this service, but this presents an example of a form my research might take.

Hello, I'm Melissa.

Before I begin posting regularly, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Melissa Fanton, and I am a fourth-year museum studies student at RIT. Since becoming an intern at The Strong National Museum of Play, my interest in Collections Management has blossomed and I hope to pursue a thesis topic related to collections. The collections at The Strong are too interesting not to study in more depth, and their library and archives can provide many high quality sources. Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for more in the coming months.

A photograph of me during my internship at The Strong. The image depicts me playing Super Mario Bros. on the day of the World Video Game Hall of Fame induction ceremony. This photograph was taken by RIT alumni Lauren Petracca, staff photographer for the Democrat & Chronicle. From the Democrat & Chronicle, June 4, 2015. Article can be found online here.

Carly's Introduction

9/2/15

Hi, my name is Carly and I am a 4th year Museum Studies student here at RIT. Over the summer I completed two internships, one at the Wildlife Museum and the other at the Gloversville Public Library. I enjoyed my time at both institutions, and I gained some great experience. At the Wildlife Museum, which is located right in my hometown, I was able to observe how children of different age groups interacted with the exhibits while on their school field trips. I noticed that older children are much more independent and prefer to be their own guides, only asking questions when they want clarification on something.
At the Gloversville Public Library I was able to work on a project that my supervisor had been wanting to start for a while. The project involved organizing a post card collection that had been gifted to the library by a local Historian and Physician after he had passed away. I was also asked to transcribe the messages on the backs of the post cards, and the week before my internship came to an end I had begun to scan the cards onto a computer.
The library also would like for me to come back over the winter break to continue working on the post card project, and I am more than happy to do so.