Finding Your Way in Museums

Museums are ever changing in today's world, just as the rest of the world around us keeps evolving and becoming more technologically advanced. It is a goal of mine with the two museums I work with, that we keep making museums entertaining, interesting, and educational for all patrons to enjoy young and old. It is very important to keep the displays updated regularly and maintained in sufficient environments and the storage facilities for all artifacts currently not on display. Many museums are not equipped with the latest or most efficient equipment to preserve or store artifacts as many museums become overcrowded and look forward to needs of expansions and more efficient ways to care for the artifacts donated by former and current donors to expand exhibitions and collections. This is one of the many reasons why I chose the career path to work in museums.

Many Museums as this above picture of the Dobson Museum shows that museums try to utilize their spaces wisely to accommodate exhibits and gain storage space in some instances by using cabinets under cases or other rooms. 

I will go into greater detail throughout my blogs about working in museums and some of the tasks and challenges faced by museum staff and volunteers. I would like to share a little bit in this first blog about how I got to where I am today in my museums career. You never truly know until you try something with the opportunities your are given in life. 

I have always loved museums ever since I was a young child. My pursuit for a college education did not begin with museums. I first started going to school to become a teacher. I was interested in looking at becoming a History or Agriculture Education teacher. I was also interested in coaching in Baseball or Basketball. I always had the passion for agriculture and being raised on the farm. I grew up on a small farm in Northeastern Oklahoma. I had a great love for history also, my parents and grandparents played a big influence on me being such a history nut, because of all the stories they would tell when I was a child and growing up through school. They passed down their knowledge and experiences to me and they really taught me a lot about life.

It took me until my second year of college to realize, that I had a great calling in life. I was the recipient of the Dobson Educational Alliance Scholarship. I had applied for it through NEO earlier in the Fall of 2010. I began my internship with the Dobson Museum in February 2011. I worked approximately 9 hours a week working with displays and scanning of pictures and negatives from the museum collections. I also assisted with any tours or guests, that came through the museum.

I remember the first day I came in to work at the museum I was working with some other museum volunteers on some unidentified pictures. As I was sitting and sorting the notebooks of pictures. I had a picture that I actually knew who it was out of about 500 we were looking through that day. My grandma was the Ottawa County Deputy Court Clerk for 27 years. She was in a picture at the old Ottawa County Courthouse and I would say she was in her late twenties or early thirties. There are numerous amounts of pictures at the museum, that need identified and we have a strong group of volunteers who help at keeping the project moving along and being able to share our collections with patrons.

We all have the means to find our way in museums. We have the ability to preserve and learn from history every day of our lives. We are preserving history in many aspects of our daily lives and there are probably times we don't realize we are preserving history, because if we send a text or email message, post a status or an event on Facebook, take a picture with our phone or camera, create an artwork to express an idea or place, or even writing a journal entry; these are just some of the ways we take part in giving future generations information to look back on in twenty, fifty, and one hundred years from now. The possibilities are endless what our emerging technologies will bring forth for our museums of tomorrow. I am extremely excited about being a part of museum development through the 21st century.

Museums are excellent tools to explore, entertain, and engage our students of today and tomorrow to see where we have been, where we are, and where we are going with this world. I will be sharing some of my experiences with working in museums and being a museum studies student throughout my blog.