last week!

This week was my last. This past Thursday was the last "Third Thursday' and it featured government maps. Like usual I helped in finding the maps and other things. We pulled out a couple of maps that were used by the Union troops for the civil war, which was especially interesting.

For the French exhibit I did a little more research that day. Karl had begun to make some definite selections for the exhibit and I was able to look over them with Cathy Baker, the library's rare book conservator. She talked to me about some of things they look for when they may conserve things, but mostly for the maps Karl picked out she was going to prepare them for exhibit, which didn't require any restoration or conservation. While at the conservation lab I learned that the process of physically setting up an exhibit is another whole process in itself. Even though I'm finished with my hours I have actually spoken to Karl and Cathy about being involved in putting up the French exhibit as I put so much work into the research.

I have learned a lot from this internship and it has opened the doors to seeing a lot of really neat things. I have never had the opportunity to leaf through books that are 200 years old prior to this, and it has really made me excited to begin a career in the museum industry.

Interesting discovery

Karl has been showing me many of the new maps in the library and a good few of them happen to be very impressive maps of France, that would be perfect for the exhibit. This week we took a new route to finding interesting artifacts on France by looking at the reference list in the back of a book about the history of traveling in France (the same book we were using to pull quotes from). We looked up some of the older books on mirlyn and sure enough we had a few of them in special collections. Karl pointed out a particular book about the travels of a balloon pilot over France and I sought it out at special collections. I did some research about the author, Dr. John Jeffries, and I found some very interesting things. As it turns out, he was one of the main witnesses for the defense for the case that followed the Boston Massacre, and supposedly he was also one of the surgeons that dealt with the injuries that followed. He was also the first person to successfully cross the English Channel by air, and he did this in a helium balloon. The book was very interesting, and included anecdotes such as a signed dedication to the science society that he presented it to. I talk about this more in my other blog if you're interested (annarborking.blogspot.com). Anyways, the book has a few pages that are visually interesting and could potentially be displayed, however, we could also use it to pull quotes from or even show a picture of it in a poster write up somewhere in the exhibit. While I may have looked at most of the maps of France, there are plenty of other routes for research that this method (looking at the references) has opened up for me! With 8 million items in the library's collection there's a good chance that my research on France could continue for a long time!

A little more time!

So last week I was told that the French exhibit was being moved back because they wanted a past exhibit, that features a lot of interesting objects from the collections, to be there while the city will be busy with graduation and Obama. This is good news in a way because we still haven't been able to speak with any of the professors. At this point in the research I have pretty much looked at every map (not atlas) of France in the Map Library and have taken pictures of those that I find interesting. We've taken into consideration the fact that some maps may be too large to exhibit, and have picked out interesting maps that are within books that could be laid out to exhibit. I have spoken with Cathy Baker (the conservator) who has agreed to involve me in the process of exhibition prep and we have arranged a time when I can go to the Buhr Facilities on South Campus to check out the lab and learn a bit about the process involved in preparing objects for exhibit. I have continued to research French maps in the collection and have begun creating a spreadsheet of the maps that I have looked at and any notes that I may want to refer to later. I have made this accessible as a google document so that the other intern, Molly, and I can both add to the same document and prevent us from looking at the same maps as her exhibit is focused on Paris. Karl gave us a few books to read about France and the early history of travel within the country to pull quotes from that we could potentially use in the exhibit. There were a few new acquisitions to the library as well, which could potentially add to the exhibit depending on what direction we decide to go (one was a French map of India, so we could perhaps focus on the French outposts for a portion on the exhibit). At least I will be able to work a little bit longer to better develop the French exhibit and I will be able to help out on the conservation process for the old exhibit coming in!