INTERNSHIP CHECK-IN: AUGUST 2021

 Internship Check-in | Jingshu Helen Yao

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For this month’s Internship Check-in, I interviewed Loren Wong. Our conversation also inspired me to reflect on my own job searching and internship experience.

Loren is working as an intern at the Public Art Program for the City of Ottawa. While her work includes the installation of artworks in public spaces around the city, Loren’s main responsibility is collections management. Loren targeted opportunities in Ottawa, the city she lives in, during her internship search. She didn’t find many formal job postings online, so she made a lot of cold calls and sent out several emails to potential employers instead.

Research is the main part of Loren’s daily tasks, where she looked up information on artists and artworks. For example, she collected background information of pollinator gardens for a meeting on future installations in the city. She is currently compiling a document for her department, consisting of a contact list of artists working in the area for reference and for future commissions. Aside from independent research and writing, Loren also took part in labelling art pieces and deductive tags. Recently, she also did social media posts to promote artworks.

Loren admitted that she didn’t like working from home. The main challenge is “one million and one technical difficulties,” as Loren described. To complete her work, she needs access to the city’s database and software. It took weeks to process an application for a computer from the city; access to software licenses and shared drives had become barriers during her internship. Loren believes that work from home also leads to inefficiency of communication, which adds to the potential for problems.

“There were weeks when I just sat on my hands and couldn’t do any work because I didn't have access to the database…", Loren related. “Then, after five hours on the phone with IT, I finally gained access and completed all the work in three days.”

Since galleries were not open during the time of her internship, Loren couldn’t visit any sites to view the artworks she was working with, but could only rely on her computer.

“It’s just me and my dying laptop against the world,” Loren quipped.

Even with the advantages of not having to commute and having flexible working hours, Loren still much preferred working in-person.

Having a background in visual art, Loren really enjoys that she could write about art for her internship. Museology and the process of collection are two of her areas of interest, and she appreciates that she had the chance to look behind the curtain of how an art gallery works.

Loren gave a piece of advice for future students in the internship course to not rely solely on the opportunities posted by the MMSt program, especially if they want to work somewhere outside of Toronto. She had a positive experience doing cold calls and felt that many institutions are open minded and happy to take on interns.

“A mistake I’ve made, and I hope other people could avoid, is selling yourselves very short during the job search process,” Loren added. She mentioned that imposter syndrome is what always made her freeze at interview questions such as, “Why would you be better at this job than the others? Why should we hire you?” Self-confidence is a simple concept but one which is the most difficult in practice, especially for people from marginalized communities. I resonate with Loren’s sentiment and instead of interviewing another fellow student, I decided to continue this discussion with my own experience.

I started with very little hope of finding an internship for the summer. The past year of trying to find opportunities in museums had strongly discouraged me. Most jobs I found in the arts and cultural sectors are reserved for Young Canada Works, which require applicants to be Canadian citizens or permanent residents. I am an international student on a study permit, which disqualified me from applying for any of those openings. The fact that I had no background in visual arts or history added to my worries and, at many points during the last year, I had doubted my decision of pursuing museum studies in general.

In January, I decided that if I am not able to work during the summer, I might as well go home to visit my family. Later that month, an iSchool email about the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario’s NextGen Job Shadowing Program caught my attention. It was only a short program consisting of virtual meetings with a host, but I was open to every little opportunity. 

Among the hosts, I found the Canadian Language Museum, an institution that I had previously connected with and always wanted to volunteer for but wasn’t able to due to COVID. Although I applied for the job shadowing program without many expectations, the virtual meetings with museum director Dr. Elaine Gold gave me the chance to ask for an opportunity to work for the museum during the summer. I was surprised by how accommodating they were, developing my internship together with me. I was given the responsibility to conduct research for an upcoming exhibition on Chinese Languages in Canada – related to my background in linguistics and language abilities. I initially worried that my trip back to China would result in a 12-hour difference from Toronto, and even if I could work remotely, it wouldn’t be ideal. But my hosts were willing to do our weekly meetings first thing in the morning at 9 am, which allowed me to return home while still being able to work a regular schedule.

I appreciated my host’s efforts to help me get the most out of my internship experience, and I started to think about ways in which I could use my situation to benefit to the work I was doing. I was also in charge of updating a list of language museums around the world, among which several museums are located in China. However, language barriers and internet restrictions made it difficult to research them. I reached out to Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) and visited their language museum to make the connection. It turned out to be a surprising experience and you can read about it in my blog post here.

 

Museum of World Languages at SISU | Photo courtesy of the author. 

My international status was one of my disadvantages from the beginning, but it ended up becoming a unique opportunity. It gave me hope that I may bring something different to my studies and in my work experience in Canada, and my internship helped to explore different possibilities to make the most of my museum studies experience.

INTERNSHIP CHECK-IN: JULY 2021

Internship Check-in | Jingshu Helen Yao

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For July's internship check-in, I got in touch with Beatrice Hunter, who is currently working at the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum in Almonte, Ontario, and Sarah Cavaliere, who is interning with the Association of Nova Scotia Museums (ANSM).

1. Beatrice Hunter and the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum

Beatrice was surprised to find out about the location of the Mississippi River in Ontario Canada, and the museum itself is situated about 30 minutes away from Ottawa. Although Beatrice is currently working remotely as a research assistant, she will be traveling to Almonte in a few weeks to continue this internship in-person.

 

Mississippi Valley Textile Museum in Almonte, Ontario | Flickr

The main task for Beatrice’s position is to establish a historical timeline of mills and woolen mills in the Mississippi Valley by consulting primary and secondary research documents. [rearranged] She is responsible for organizing her findings into an Excel spreadsheet and coding the data. Later on, when she is on site, she will collaborate with the volunteers at the museum to create a research binder. [reworded]

What most intrigues Beatrice about her role at the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum is the working class aspect of Canadian history that she gets to explore.

“Since I began working in the museum profession as a volunteer, most of the history I've gotten to explore and interpret has been [that of] upper-class Canadians,” Beatrice explained. “This project dealt with working class Canadians, which I was very interested in.” She has been able to apply research skills, collaborative skills, and especially critical analysis skills to produce accurate research accessible for the public.

Artifact on Display in Mississippi Valley Textile Museum | Flickr

Beatrice found this opportunity through Symplicity, the internship recruitment platform provided by iSchool. She had applied for a dozen positions and didn’t think that the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum would consider her due to her having aspirations in a different area of the museum field than the position encompassed. However, she was thrilled to be offered this opportunity and to connect with various museum professionals during her work. Thus, she would like to suggest other emerging museum professionals approaching the internship course to be open to any opportunities, even when they aren’t aligned with your exact career goal.

“You will get to meet some really wonderful people who are very supportive and empathetic and generally really fun to talk to,” Beatrice said. “The skills you learned will be transferable.”



2. Sarah Cavaliere and the Association of Nova Scotia Museums (ANSM)

Sarah found out about the internship through the emails sent by the Careers Office at the iSchool. Cold-emailing was also a strategy that she took during the job searching process. She specifically reached out to institutions that were affiliated with the university for student internship opportunities.

 

Association of Nova Scotia Museums (ANSM) | LAMNS

Sarah described ANSM as a small organization. Therefore, her role involved many different aspects of the museum’s operation, where collections and educational programming were the main focus.

“I work with the Association’s 56 member museums’ databases, and I also create educational resources based on the collections to be posted on ANSM’s collections website, novamuse.ca,” Sarah stated. “For my collections work, I have been doing a lot of data cleaning and entry. I go through each site’s database, where I merge duplicated donor records as well as ensure that data has been entered consistently. I’m also working with a subject matter expert from the community to help enrich the descriptions and object histories recorded in the museums’ object records. Most recently, I’ve started working with the collections management system’s IT person to develop new features for the database’s condition reporting function.”

Sarah's work also involves the creation of diverse educational activities.

“I have been selecting photographs of the museums’ objects from novamuse.ca and turning them into colouring pages to add to the website, and I have also been creating object-based lesson plans for teachers in Nova Scotia to use with their students,” she explained. “So far, I have created a math/social studies lesson about the Canadian census, a math/art project about patchwork quilts, an art project about hooked rugs, and an English Language Arts/French assignment about samplers. I’ve been having a lot of fun with them!”

Example of Sarah’s work. Screenshot courtesy of Sarah Cavaliere.

Sarah believed that the different roles she took up during the internship gave her the opportunity to learn about diverse aspects of museum professions, as well as to gain insights that will benefit her in future career.

“My position combines my two major interests – collections and educational programming – which was not something I expected to be able to find,” Sarah said. “Being able to work in both of my interest areas has helped me understand the things I like best about both.”

“Even though I haven’t been able to physically handle any collections, I’ve discovered that I enjoy data entry more than I expected to.” Elaborating on her experience with the two separate subfields, Sarah concluded the following: “My internship projects have also confirmed my ideas that my passion in the museum field lies in creating collections-based educational programming for schools.”

Similarly to Beatrice, Sarah worked from home for her internship. She had originally hoped to live in Halifax for the summer, but was forced to change her plans due to the new restrictions in May.

“As disappointing as that was, the best part of working from home is how convenient it is. Everything I need is always really close at hand and, instead of commuting, I can spend that time on other things. And, best of all, I can still play with my cat on my breaks!” Sarah said when I asked about the disadvantages and advantages of her online internship. “One of the biggest challenges of working from home, though, has been achieving a good work-life balance. It’s easy to feel like I’m constantly in intern-mode, since there isn’t much of a boundary between where I work and where I do other things. The time difference between the GTA and Halifax has also been a bit of a learning curve. Halifax is only an hour ahead of Toronto, but sometimes it takes more mental gymnastics than I expected to translate the times my co-workers mention in meetings and emails!”

Sarah’s workspace at home (feat. Leo)

Lastly, Sarah gave the following suggestions to future students: “Don’t be afraid to take chances! I almost didn’t apply to the position I’m working in now since it seemed like a big risk to do my internship somewhere I’m unfamiliar with. I am so glad that I decided to take a chance on ANSM – it has turned out to be an incredible experience!”

 

FALL INTERNSHIP CHECK- IN

 Internship Check-In |  Annie McCarron

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The pandemic has impacted our education experience in ways we could not have imagined. In these tough times with restrictions, budget cuts and availability, many of our journeys have not been what we anticipated at the beginning of our museum studies education. Summer internships were virtually non-existent, and many of us had to scramble to fill course requirements. Luckily, some of our cohort were able to move internships to the fall, and gain valuable experience in this new work from home environment. This week, I talk to Leora Bromberg and Lauren McAusland about their internships, imposter syndrome, and how they are faring working from home during the pandemic.


Lauren McAusland is working as the Interpretation Intern at the Royal Botanical Gardens.


AM: What is your current internship position and how did you go about getting it?


Lauren McAusland: As the interpretation intern, I am part of a small team that has one FT interpreter and a contract interpreter. I have worked a few different positions at the garden. I worked last summer to research the history of the garden and do public programming around their history, to bring a historical perspective to programming that focuses heavily on biology and botany. I found out about the internship through a former colleague who urged me to apply. 


AM: What are some of the jobs you are completing in this role?


Lauren: I am developing content for their new online learning platform. Every week we put out two videos, a kids activity, a worksheet, and something directed towards adult learners. My specific jobs differ from week to week depending on what I am assigned. I also assist with programming events. I work from home to develop the online learning content, and do event prep. When the events are actually going on I do get to be on site. I am currently assisting with the Pumpkin trail, which is 300 carved jack-o-lanterns along a forest path, with interpreters stationed throughout to talk to people. I get to be a Pumpkin Scientist! A personal highlight for me is seeing how amazed kids are when they find out that pumpkins float!


AM: What subjects does the content you are developing cover?


Lauren: There is some history content but it is mostly botany. My undergraduate degree is in history and biology so I have a broad subject base which is great for working at the Botanical gardens.


AM: What have you found most challenging in your internship role? Have you encountered any difficulties working from home?


Lauren: Juggling multiple things in the same space can be challenging. Hard to sort school, internship, work-study, and my other job. Setting boundaries of what time is devoted to work and school and sticking to them is crucial. Its Important to remember that this is new for everyone, us students but also professionals who have been in this field for a long time! Before I could just walk by someone's desk if I needed clarification, and at first I felt bad having to send so many emails, but we are all learning and even seasoned museum professionals have had to make changes to how they work.


I also struggled a bit with imposter syndrome and undervaluing my skills. For the online programming, part of it is editing videos, which I have experience with but would never consider myself an expert, I just know from playing around on my own. At the gardens though only one other person knows how to edit movies, and now I edit my own and even help out my colleagues. It was a pleasant surprise at my own skills, and I would never even put it as a skill on my resume before but now I would! It's important not to undervalue your skills. Here is a video Lauren did about Sticky Seeds


AM: What are you excited to accomplish in your time as an intern?


Lauren: I am excited to get the opportunity to write text panels for holiday programming which I have never done before. I also want to work in the arts and culture sector so I appreciate the valuable programming experience.

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Leora Bromberg is completing her internship in the role of Education and Outreach Intern at the Bibliography and Print Room at the Robertson Davies Library at Massey College.


AM: Tell me about what your internship role is, and how you came about getting the position:


Leora: I am completing my internship as the Education and Outreach Intern in the Bibliography and Print Room at the Robertson Davies Library at Massey College. This position runs in partnership with the Book History & Print Culture Collaborative Program which I am a part of. I started volunteering in the print room in January of 2019. I have always been intrigued by the work, but was intimidated by the space at the start of my masters. However, as soon as I took the plunge and started volunteering, I fell in love with the work, and for the next year I applied to be a printing apprentice and teaching fellow, a position that acts as a representative of the book history program in the print room. Due to the pandemic this apprenticeship opportunity dissolved but I wanted to continue my involvement in some way, and through my previous connections was able to arrange an internship there to further my work with the printing presses.


AM: What is one of your favourite aspects about working in the print?


Leora: As part of my work in the print room, I have been working with and reviving the Hebrew Type Collection, and have been wanting to make an exhibit highlighting this revived collection, as a way to promote it and share its fascinating story. My internship has evolved, with the exhibit as a secondary component, and my main responsibility right now is assisting the print room with building their online presence. I currently help with video tours and printing demonstration series, as they are working towards adapting their content to an online format. The print room is like a maker space for the 19th century library. While technically a library, the space feels like a museum because there are tours and they are preserving the artefacts — like a living history site!

AM: What have you found challenging about this experience?


The aspect of video production, I had not anticipated having to edit videos as part of this internship, but due to the overwhelming nature of COVID I stepped into a video editing role but it’s been a good challenge.


I also initially experienced imposter syndrome. Writing the big script for the video tour of the printing room that two experts in printing would be going over, I doubted my experience, and felt I did not have enough knowledge to write. Through this experience, I ended up realizing I knew a lot more than what I thought, which is cool, and the experience allowed me to identify what I didn’t know and fill in the gaps.


AM: Any advice for future people in your role?


Leora: You know more than you give yourself credit for! And don’t be afraid of what you don’t know, part of this experience is learning on the job. Be open minded to learning new things, don't doubt your knowledge or abilities. I think of myself as a student, but I realized that students are knowledgeable. When I talked to the experts and the print room they even said they wouldn't even use the term expert to describe themselves, because you should always be learning.


AM: Tell me a bit more about the Hebrew Collection that you are working with.


Leora: It’s called the Balinson Hebrew Type Collection but it is actually a Yiddish type collection. You can tell there were letters that were more used in Yiddish. Elongated aleph which is heavily used in Yiddish. It also highlights a history of Yiddish printing within Canada. This position has made me want to pursue future studies in Yiddish. Yiddish is considered a dead language, but it is seeing a huge revival right now in fringe communities. Duolingo is releasing Beta Yiddish in December!


AM: What interesting facts have you learned?


Leora: I have tons of fun printing facts. One is that all the uppercase letters stored in the uppercase and all the lowercase letters are stored in the lower case on a shelf, and that is where we get the term from today!


Lead type is toxic. Type medal is an alloy made from tin, lead, and antimony. Both lead and antimony are toxic, but make the alloy strong. The etymology of antimony is interesting, it comes from the french word antimoine, which means monk-killer or anti-monk, because they died from consuming antimony that was in the ink


(If you are interested in more fun facts check out the video Leora made as part of her internship).

AUGUST INTERNSHIP CHECK-IN

Internship Check-In | Annie McCarron

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For August I got to chat with Jaime and Hanna, who are both completing their internships remotely from Toronto.


Jaime Meier is completing her internship with a Professor in the Drama and Performing Arts Department within the University of Toronto.


AM: Tell me a bit about the work you are doing for your internship this summer?


Jaime: My internship transitioned from a work study I completed in the fall. The Professor I am working with focuses on 17th century Indigenous and French relations in regards to performance. I have done a lot of work with 17th C. Indigenous accounts and explorers, so it tied in well with my knowledge. The Professor had grant money to go to Paris and do research in the archives for a book. Due to COVID19 we had to make changes to our summer plans so this summer has been finding other things to do. Instead of cancelling the internship my supervisor has found other things for me to do. A lot of my work has been with copyright and image permissions which is something that I wanted to learn about. Having worked in museums before, when they are developing exhibitions I have heard about the challenges around image permissions and rights, and the price of using these images. This summer I have been trying to figure out what images to use, working with different institutions across the world. It has provided me with a case study in copyright and permission in different places. In Canada and the U.S. it can be very expensive, from $60 to well over $100. In France and the U.K. it is more like 5 euro/pounds or no licensing fee at all. It's been interesting to see how they treat academics. In Europe, even though it's commercial, they know it's for use in something academic and for the public so they charge less. They just want a small amount to keep their institution going or a free copy of the book with the images in it when the professor is done and that’s all they expect. I have looked at images from institutions in Toronto that the rights are well over 100 dollars! My supervisor gave me a list of images but I have gotten to help curate the final selection for the book, I help to decide which ones end up in the book and where they go. If it will be a full image, or in black and white or in colour. I have a great supervisor who trusts me.


I have also done a lot of transcription work, taking French documents and writing them up. It's really strange looking at old French from the 17th c. it's really different, it can sometimes look like typos but I just transcribe it as I see it. It's been great also working on my French skills as I have always wanted that experience.


AM: What’s something useful that you have learned from your internship? 

Unicorn of the Red Sea, n.d. Photo courtesy of  Louis Nicolas Life & Work

Jaime: I liked hunting down an image and almost negotiating for the rights. I think this skill will help me with my work with museums. I know copyright can be really stressful and I did not have a lot of experience in it, but now I feel a lot more confident when people ask me what they can do with certain images. Even for my own work, knowing the limits of what you can do with an image is extremely useful.


AM: What is the main focus of the images you are researching?


Jaime: We are doing research looking at Indigenous performance and ceremonies, how it has been recorded by Jesuit missionaries, and how it has influenced European forms of dance. We have been working with members of the Haudenosaunee community to make sure we are not crossing any boundaries since we are talking about their ceremonies and we don't want to include anything that we shouldn't. We ran into this issue where we almost included a sacred ceremony that they did not want included, because it was never supposed to be recorded. So we have taken that out and we are working with the community to see what they want. The last thing we want to do is perpetuate what the Jesuits did and just record anything and everything.


AM: Do you have any  interesting images you have found through through your research you can share with us?

Jaime: Unicorn of the Red Sea by Louis Nicolas. The context is when he was in "New France" the Jesuit Missionary Louis Nicolas recorded hundreds of animals and plants and then threw in a unicorn, and claimed to have seen the unicorn with his own eyes!

AM: Have you encountered any challenges in your work?


Jaime: I find working from home extremely challenging, I like being able to work from a different space or with someone else. It's nice that I have flexible work hours, but it's hard to stay focused at home because you can’t escape other work and chores. I also miss the camaraderie of office spaces. My supervisor is amazing but it would be nice to see people everyday and check-in.

Hanna Schacter is currently doing her summer internship at the Ontario Jewish Archives and the Neuburger Holocaust Education Centre.


AM: Tell me a bit about the work you are doing for your internship this summer?


Hanna: I am working for two institutions, the Ontario Jewish Archives and the Nueberger Holocaust Centre. I have been working on three different projects, one for the Ontario Jewish Archives and two for the Holocaust Centre. I am enrolled in the Collaborative Specialization in Jewish Studies, and as part of those requirements I needed to do my internship at a Jewish Institution. I had solidified an internship in early March, before the pandemic and luckily they were able to keep me as an intern.


For the Ontario Jewish Archives, I am working through creating a digital version of their Stories of Spadina Walking Tour. The tour has been run for over 40 years since the 1970s and tells the Jewish History of Kensington Market and the early settlement of Jewish people in Toronto and the surrounding areas. I started by reviewing the content of the tour, as well as looking at other digital tours to see what was out there and what would work for us. I got to interview the 5 amazing tour guides who have been doing the tours for years. I had a list of questions that I asked to gain their insight. From there I took all that information and thought about the common themes. Then I developed what I think will work on the digital version. Now we are waiting for tour guides to write different sections of the stops and I have been going through the Ontario Jewish Archives and the Toronto Star archives to find pictures to go along with the digital stops. From my work this summer I discovered that I love working with archival collections and looking at old pictures.


For the Neuberger Holocaust Centre I am doing research on young professional programming. They currently have a great young professional program unlike any other institution, and I have been gathering information to see how other places have been handling similar programming during COVID19, and what sort of changes they have made to online.


For my third project I am doing some collection development for the Neuberger Holocaust Centre. They have plans to open a new physical museum in the future, so I have been going through their archives to see what exhibiting content there is that is useful, the interpretive elements available, and what common themes they cover. I am also researching other holocaust museums and what they cover, what pieces and artifacts they use to tell stories. This project has been more on hold because of COVID19, as I have not been able to talk to as many people and conduct the necessary research due to the pandemic.



AM: What are you most excited to accomplish?


Hanna: For my exhibition project in the fall I will actually be able to continue with the walking tour that I am doing and continuing working through it, it will be great because I get to see what it will become. I would love to do some user testing once the website is launched and also make some educational resources to go along with the tour. I have really enjoyed doing the research for it and finding the archival materials, I get really fascinated looking at old photos and I love Kensington Market too. It is a place that I have grown up going and now get to learn about the Jewish history of it too. It has been a home to so many different commutes and still is.



AM: Any advice for future people in your position?


Hanna: For anyone taking on a remote internship, I would say communicate — a lot. I regret not communicating more at certain times. I think also that you should never be afraid to ask for help! I have also learned more technical stuff about archives, and I have become a better researcher throughout this internship. I have had an amazing supervisor who is an archivist at the OJA. We have weekly calls checking in and seeing where I am at, she has been very helpful especially if I am unsure if something is useful or not, I will present to her and she will give me great feedback about my work.


AM: What skills have you employed from classwork?


Hanna: I took the User Experience for Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museum course and it is always in the back of my mind now, whenever I do anything for the public. Even at the start, doing research about different walking tours I am constantly thinking about the users, what are their needs, ease of use, site accessibility issues. I also took the Public Programming and Education course, where we learned about tours and the different elements to set up a tour. Certain questions to keep in mind: what are we learning here? What is our theme? These helped guide my research for the walking tours.


AM: Any interesting stories from the walking tours you would like to share? 

Augusta Fruit Market, August 1956.

 Ontario Jewish Archives, accession 2006-1-3

Hanna: The tour guides told me that everyone has a fish in the bath story. Before Shabbat people would buy fish and they didn’t have anywhere to keep it but their bathtub. Someone had a story where they were about to hop in the bath and there was a fish. I liked this story because I think it conveys the hustle and bustle of how Kensington Market is. Not sure how true the story is but it is something that has been passed along.

AM: What interesting facts have you learned?


Hanna: I have learned some interesting institutional history about organizations that the Jewish Community have established that still live on. On Cecil Street the Jewish old folks home was established in the early 1900s, which is now Baycrest Centre. Places have moved out of the Kensington Market area but are still going strong and serving the community. I have always felt that being Jewish you care for your community, and that was so true with everyone coming here to Toronto, and establishing themselves, and helping each other when they got here. These stories of care and serving the community are well documented within the archives.

INTERNSHIP CHECK-IN

Internship Check-In | Annie McCarron

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With all that is going on in the world right now, many of our summers have not turned out the way we originally planned. Usually, in the summer between 1^st and 2^nd year, MMSt students embark on an internship within a cultural heritage organization in order to gain hands on experience within their chosen environment. This year, with the restrictions in place, many opportunities were placed on hold or eliminated completely.  However, a few of my fellow classmates were fortunate enough to find internships to complete this summer in different aspects of the cultural sector. I recently sat down with two students from the 2021 cohort, Jessica and Alynese, to talk about their internships and how COVID-19 has impacted the internship experience for them.

Jessica Lanziner is currently doing her internship remotely as the Research Fellow at the Museum of Health Care. Knowing nothing about healthcare, she applied on a whim after LinkdIn creeping someone from her undergraduate degree, who she noticed had the position before.

Workplace set-up. Photo courtesy of Jessica Lanzier

Jessica: I noticed it said you don’t need to know anything about healthcare – I know nothing, but the internship was still going forward and it’s a stipend pay so I applied and got a call back which was awesome. It's not what I was planning, but it’s a huge research role, and I am learning a lot that I never thought I would be learning about. I had to apply to the fellowship with a topic, propose a research idea, and I figured let’s be timely and connect it to the current COVID-19 pandemic. I selected the history of PPE and Infectious diseases in Canada, looking at PPE and how it has evolved. Since I knew that museums would not be opening I proposed to do things entirely remotely.

AM: Where did you gain inspiration for your research topic?

Jessica: Like lots of people, I had been reading a lot during lockdown. I read the Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris, a scholar with a PhD in the History of Science, Medicine & Technology from the University of Oxford. I read her book and went off of that, listening to different talks and podcasts she had been on. She was on the Joe Rogan podcast, blowing his mind explaining the history of surgery. From this appearance she gained a large following. For my research proposal, I thought I will make it timely and do PPE and Infections, and explore the history of the use of PPE within Canada in regards to infections diseases.

Jessica’s current manuscript, titled after some reworking, is called “Histories of Personal Protective Equipment and Strategies in the Fight to Control Infectious Disease,” which once completed will be available on the Museum of Healthcare Website (where you can also see past Research Fellow Manuscripts). As a research fellow, Jessica is required to write a large paper at the end of her fellowship and create 4 blog posts about aspects of her research.

AM: What is your paper about?

Jessica: The history of different PPE and how it has evolved. The last chapter is on infectious disease outbreaks and how we have managed them in Canada using the history of PPE from before. My manuscript will look at Canadian responses to the 1918 influence, HIV, Tuberculosis, Sars, COVID-19. It's weird that I am currently living my research. For COVID-19, no archival materials are available so it’s all my own pictures and such.

AM: What have you found challenging about this experience?

Jessica: It’s been hard because I eat sleep and breathe pandemic. It's good and I have learned a lot but it makes me frustrated in my daily life. Stuff we have known to be science since the 1880s is not new or difficult! Because in their galleries they currently have vaccines and infectious disease information so it will be interesting to see how they will incorporate the stuff from this year.

AM: What interesting facts have you learned?

Jessica: [about] Respirators and disposable respirators. In the past, they had a similar issue to today with people being like my child is afraid of wearing masks, kids very afraid of gas masks so [the government] decided to make child friendly gas masks modelled off of Mickey mouse, that has ears and polka dots, and it makes them even more scary. They didn’t end up using them, there are still some in military archives, so they are hard to find but even more scary than a regular gas mask.

AM: Have you encountered any difficulties in your research?

Jessica: I have been conscious in trying to talk about how epidemics affect different racial groups in Canada, but I am only finding limited resources online. Papers just aren’t available for research online, it's hard to find diverse viewpoints about how historically pandemics affected minority communities in Canada. It's been frustrating, but that’s how it is with doing online research right now. Since I can’t go into the archives I have to rely on just what I can find online.

AM: Any advice for future people in your role?

Jessica: Not advice, but we all need to give more credit to those students who have spent their time doing those boring hours on long digitization projects, the only thing online saving us right now! Manual labour from cataloging students is really paying off for me right now.

AM: What skills have you employed from classwork?

Jessica: In our indigenous material heritage course, we looked at questions of who created this heritage and what does it mean for people to be using it who are from a different culture? I have been trying to follow the things from there and use broader viewpoints within my research.

AM: Anything surprising in what you have learned?

Jessica: I am learning a lot about copyright! I have had to deal with copyright and infringement, and that made me realize I wasn’t always doing it right before. I have learned how to actually get rights for images and reproduction rights, I’ve had to email a ton of places for certain images and I have become attached to having certain images! Some places like the city of Toronto allow you to use them for free for research if they’re online. I have been very attached to getting the correct photo rights!

Alynese Nightingale is interning at Lambton House Museum as an Archives Technician.

Lantern Slide/Glass negative from Lambton House Museum. Photo courtesy of Alynese Nightingale

AM: Tell me about your internship position.

Alynese: I applied in late April and didn’t hear back until June. I’m an Archive Technician – they merged two positions. I am by myself everyday, go in to do what I need to do, no one bothers me or anything. They usually hire two interns but only one this year —due to COVID-19 they have combined the positions. Since I am working alone I get to go into the office everyday. I am very lucky that the pandemic has not affected the daily roles of my job.

AM: What a day in the life looks like for you?

Alynese:  I am organizing collections so I like to start by going back and double checking my work from the pervious day for any mistakes. I don’t have concrete things I need to do everyday, I have creative control so I can choose what to work on. Today I finished cleaning out the archive room and started organizing collections which I will spend the next few weeks doing. I am helping the Lambton House Museum create a foundation for their archives, putting collection management policies in place, making finding aids so that museum workers can access things and researchers can come in. Doing that and getting it into an online database so it's all catalogued, they currently do not have accession numbers, so I'm creating a system for them that works and is easy for researchers and museum staff to navigate. I have been applying a lot of what I’ve learned in collections management from this past year.

I have always wanted to do collections so I was very excited for the opportunity when they were like “here are all of our collection things, do something with it!” In smaller museums sometimes collections are neglected for other more important things, and now I have time to focus on this and get it organized.

At the end of the week I do a report on what I did that week. I like the work because I can listen to music and podcasts! I listened to a lot of Dateline but it started to get too heavy so switched to Things You Missed in History Class.

AM: What is your favourite aspect of the job so far?

Alynese: Accessioning, going through and doing inventory reports, itemizing. I like seeing a new historical thing for the first time, it’s exciting to be the first person to see it.

AM: Is there anything that has surprised you about the job?

Alynese: I am surprised by how much control they have given me and how much they respect my opinion, not treating me like a student – they are treating me like an expert in the field and they are confident in the schooling and experience I have to do the job.

AM: What are you most excited to accomplish?

Alynese: I am most excited to accomplish organizing the collection. I am excited to create a concrete policy they can follow in the future, and have an impact on the organization and to be able to contribute a legacy to the future.

AM: What are some of the interesting objects you have found in the collection so far?

Alynese: Lots of photographs of the Humber River area and lots of cool photography glass negatives from the Kodak Archives showcasing the Humber River area, very cool. They have around 400 glass negatives or lantern slides showcasing very cool historic photos or paintings from the early 1900s. They are film negatives that layer onto a piece of glass and encased and can slide into a projector.  They cover scenes of the Humber River, paintings, children’s drawings on a project for pollution, houses in the area that students went and took pictures of, lots of different areas of local history that they have recorded.

Lantern Slide/Glass negative from Lambton House Museum. Photo courtesy of Alynese Nightingale

AM: Any advice for future people in your position?

Alynese: Keep a lot of notes and be really organized because it is easy to get confused! I have had plenty of times where I work on something and get disorganized and have to start over, so I have learned the importance of detailed notes!

The interviews have been edited for length and clarity. 

LETTERS FROM THE EDITORS: SIT DOWN, CHECK IN, AND CHAT

Letter From The Editor | Jordan Fee and Alexandra Forand

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Hello Musing readers! As summer is coming to an end we thought, as your editors-in-chief, that we would sit down, check in, and chat about the insightful writings by our amazing contributing editors this past summer.

Your trusty editors-in-chief, Jordan Fee (Top) and Ally Forand (bottom). Photographs curtesy of Jordan Fee and Ally Forand. 

Jordan: How was your summer, Ally?

Ally: It’s been really good! This summer I was working in the collections department at the Western Development Museum in Saskatoon (SK), so I really enjoyed reading Defne’s Collections Corner, especially her latest article exploring how to identify objects that have spookily little information about them. I also did a brief stint setting up for an exhibition which required putting textiles on mannequins. I  didn't know how important mannequins were in exhibits until I read Enya's article. I also gained a lot of practical information from Samantha's latest article, in which she sits down with Tazim Hirji of the Aga Khan Museum. How was your internship?

Left: Image Courtesy of Defe Inceoglu // Right: Antique Decorations Inside a Historic Building in Shantytown (Source)

Jordan: My internship has been fantastic! I’ve been working in tandem with the publications department and the curatorial department at the Art Gallery of Ontario, helping to develop an exhibition that will open next year. However, I think I’ve gotten just as much enjoyment from reading about some of the other internships that Museum Studies students have been engaged in over the past three months - just knowing that one of our colleagues is in Naples helping to refine archival practices on an archaeological dig makes me very happy! In fact, it seems like road trips have been somewhat of an unexpected theme for Musings this summer. Michelle and Caroline stopped in for a special post about their road trip through Canada, and more recently, Amy wrote about the incredible experience that she had at Museum Queeries in Winnipeg! I can’t express in words how lucky we are to have such great colleagues and friends.

Members of Museum Queeries at the Manitoba Museum being shown pelts and animal remains. Photo courtesy of Lauren Bosc.

Centre of Canada, MB. Photo Courtesy of Michelle Wright.

Ally: The roles that are being filled by MMSt students and graduates are so varied and exciting. I felt Elizabeth’s Alumni Check-in really underscored the opportunities available. But besides your internship, how was your summer?

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happy lil emerging museum professional spotted in her natural habitat 🧐 #museumweek

A post shared by Joanna Sarah (@jswrks_) on May 14, 2019 at 7:47pm PDT

Jordan: I completely agree; it’s always so nice to read about Museum Studies alumni and the exciting projects that they’ve been working on. I have to say that this summer, for me, has been one of the best in recent memory. Aside from working at the AGO, I’ve cooked dinner for friends, travelled to some beautiful farms, and drank some great wine with my co-intern Erin Stodola, who was featured in the first of Joanna’s Internship Check-In’s. To finish it all off, I’ll be travelling to Berlin in August to see my friend get married. I couldn’t be more excited! How has your summer been, Ally?

Photograph courtesy of Jordan Fee

Ally: That all sounds so exciting, I especially liked reading about your trip to the farm where you explored the different types of pigs and the intangible heritage they represent! This summer I tried to get out of the city as much as possible and explore places I had not seen before. This explorational spirit also inspired some of my own articles, especially when I found material culture in the wilderness! Luckily, I was fully prepared after taking all three of Selin’s Cultural Heritage quizzes!

Jordan: I suppose that “exploration” could be another one of our running themes. My belief is that the best writing comes from experience, and it certainly shows in all of the articles that you’ve produced this summer. I found your most recent article to be extremely powerful, and I was also happy to see that you had written a second part of Bringing Back the Buffalo! Now I just can’t wait until school starts again so that we can once again have Musings running at full speed.

(Source)

Ally: All-in-all, it's been great summer! I’ll have to review Emma’s articles for tips and tricks for grad school to get focused for the Fall.

Source. 

Jordan: But not before a much needed break in August! To prepare for the Fall, Musings will be taking a short hiatus for the month of August. During this time, I encourage all of you to relax and unwind a little before the school year begins. You all deserve it!

TEACHING AND LEARNING AS INTERNS: FROM TORONTO TO NAPLES

 Internship Check-In | Joanna Wreakes

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Hello Pals, back again for another Internship Check-In. I’m super stoked to share what some of my colleagues are up to in the diverse roles they’re tackling for their internships. Read on to grab a small taste of the kinds of work an MMSt internship can lead to!

In this edition we'll be hearing from:

Amelia Smith: Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, Toronto, ON

Defne Inceoglu: Lambton House (Heritage York), Toronto, ON

Revital Weiss: Koffler Gallery, Toronto, ON

Selin Kahramanoglu: Colegio Oficial de Doctores y Licenciados en Filosofia y Letras y Ciencias de Valiencia y Castellon,  Naples, Italy

This photo featuring Lambton House juxtaposes the historic and modern found all around Toronto. Source.

Please introduce yourself and tell us about your internship role.

Amelia: I'm Amelia and I have been interning at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre as a research assistant. The JCCC has begun redesigning their permanent exhibition on Japanese diaspora, and I've been taken on to research Japanese migration into Imperial Manchuria.

Defne: Defne Inceoglu here, I’m the archives and records intern at Lambton House, which is a historic house run by the charity Heritage York. While my title says archives and records, I’m ALSO a collections manager, library cataloger, website designer, photographer, policy writer, exhibition designer, provenance researcher, cleaner, resident neighbourhood expert, admin worker… I wear a lot of fun, fun hats.

Revital: My name is Revital and I’m an urban-planner-turned-Museum-Studies-student. This summer, I’m working as a Gallery Education Assistant at the Koffler Gallery, a contemporary art gallery. Together with a devoted education team, I am responsible for making our summer show accessible to our diverse visitors through engaging tours and conversation. I also help create and facilitate workshops that highlight some major themes in the exhibition, and research for the development of education packages.

Selin: I am entering my third year in the CDP (Combined Degree) program this September, with a concentration in Archives and Records Management. I had the great fortune of joining a dig in Naples this summer. My internship role is to clean, label, store, and inventory all of the artifacts recovered from our excavation site in Pompeii, for the local museum's use.

Defne in the Blue Room at Lambton House, surrounded by the library to be catalogued. Photo courtesy of Defne Inceoglu.

What is a typical day like at your institution?

Amelia: My average day is not very exciting to write about. Most days consist of endless reading and making as many notes as I think necessary. I usually get in at 8:30 AM and the reading doesn't stop until around 4:30 PM (excluding a break for lunch around 12/12:30 PM).

If feel I need a break from reading, I will usually go on a search for artefacts that could make it into my section of the exhibition. As I cannot read Japanese, the places I can search are limited. Nevertheless, I have been able to find a load of excellent items through The Library of Congress and Harvard Libraries.

Defne: My day starts early in the morning, as I throw my thermos of coffee into my backpack and take my bike ride through High Park/the Humber River trails and the surrounding neighbourhood. The Humber River and the former City of York is incredibly important to us at Heritage York, our mandate is centered around the history of this area. Plus, the exhibition I am designing is about the City of York. I like to spend time every morning getting to know the neighbourhood better. Once I get to work, I start up on one of my projects. I type-type away at my desk. We open to the public around 12:30-1 PM until around 3:30 or 4. At this time myself or the other intern (CDP student Devin Benczik!) will greet people, chat and give tours. However, much of my day is spent at my desk, cataloging books or objects, writing copy for my exhibition, researching provenance or designing the website.

Revital: Each day is slightly different and there have been phases of work throughout the internship. Ahead of the exhibition opening, my typical day was spent on various activities related to the summer show, like helping complete the education package used for tours, building the summer workshops, and reaching out to cultural and academic organizations to offer a tour and workshop.

Selin: Typically, we leave our residence by 7:00 AM and head to the dig site. I gather all the materials excavated the day before, and take the boxes to another on site lab. There, the materials undergo general conservation treatment and are recorded. In the evenings, our team has a debriefing, or we tour another local site, before having dinner by 9:00 PM!

Amelia looking beautiful in yukata at the JCCC's Natsu Matsuri. Photo courtesy of Amelia Smith.

Is there anything that’s surprised you about your internship?

Amelia: I was surprised by how quickly I started locating artefacts that could make it into the exhibition. Within my first couple of weeks, I had found a book at Downsview library that I felt would be perfect. Granted, about a week later I realized that books from the first half of the 20th century might not be the best choice for a permanent exhibition at the JCCC, but you win some, you lose some.

Defne: I am surprised at how trusting and supportive my supervisors are. As a volunteer Board, they care very much about their work and in return they care very much about us interns. They let me run around with my ambitions and guide my ideas without restricting the limitations. It has been a fun process getting to create my own projects and implement them. Their expertise and kindness has been very valuable.

Revital: I am surprised about the level of autonomy I have been given and the amount of responsibility with which I have been entrusted. My supervisor is always available to answer questions and checks in occasionally, but I am mostly self-monitoring to complete my tasks. I am especially surprised and appreciate that my supervisor has faith in the work I produce and accepts ideas that I bring to the table.

Selin: I was surprised to learn that my supervisor was willing to take my advice in regards to improving some workplace practices. Mostly, the project is well-organized and progressing smoothly, but I was able to make some suggestions about better practices. For example, I've been helping with improving the code of the photographs in the hard drive so that they're easier to find, using archival standards.

Selin hard at work cleaning artifacts excavated from the dig in Naples. Photo courtesy of Selin Kahramanoglu.

What are you excited about accomplishing throughout your internship?

Amelia: I'm excited to write the essay that will be the basis for my portion of the exhibition. With the amount of time I have put into the research and the multiple dimensions I have imagined for it, I am confident this will be an essay unlike any other I've written in the past. And that is exciting to me.

Defne: I am excited to lock down the accession and storage frameworks that I am currently helping to develop and/or improve. It has been a fun, challenging process. We are currently getting ready to start accessioning more of the objects in the collection. The best part about this is the provenance research. I have been doing a big research project on a William Notman/John Arthur Fraser painting that we have. It's like playing detective and I am excited for what else is left to be turned up.

Revital: The Koffler maintains ideals of social justice, equality and inclusivity. I am most excited about fulfilling this mandated practice and have already done so through giving tours that highlight the need for social change, providing arts programming to children in underserved communities, and contributing to a lecture about erased art history that centres on marginalized and oppressed communities. I very much look forward to continuing this social practice both at the Koffler and future workplaces.

Selin: I'm most excited about seeing the full lifecycle of these artifacts. So far, these very interesting objects have been recovered after thousands of years, cleaned like new, catalogued, and shipped to the museum. I'd like to know more about how the museum displays these objects, and how they hope to tell the story of Pompeii, using our archaeological data and modern exhibition techniques.

Revital leading some young visitors through a guided meditation. Photo courtesy of Revital Weiss.

Do you have any words of wisdom for someone entering a similar position?


Amelia: Don't be afraid to see where a position will take you. I knew nothing about the Japanese occupation of Manchuria before I started this position, and now I've got Manchurian postcards indelibly burned into my mind's eye for all eternity.

Defne: Pacing your work is important. It can get a bit hectic with lots of projects on the go, so remember to take your time and plan accordingly.

Also, when you work in a food desert, don’t forget to pack your lunch!

Revital: The best tours are those that feel like a conversation, so ask your audience questions and listen when they have something on their mind; you will not only learn new pieces of information that you can incorporate into the show, but your day will go by much faster when you treat visitors like friends!

Selin: Don't be afraid to speak up. You are more qualified than you realize, and you've got some great ideas to offer. Keep an open mind when it comes to learning something new, but don't forget that you might end up being a teacher too!
 
The interviews have been edited for length and clarity. 

Edit: A previous version of this article linked Selin's internship to Archaeological Institute of America. This has since been updated to accurately reflect the organization she is working with.