Executive Summary:

Introduction:

Over the course of a 12-week period during the spring of 2013, I had the opportunity of completing an internship with the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg.  As a nonprofit, Smithsonian sponsored organization, the museum holds artifacts and materials from all across the country relating to the Civil War, exhibiting some of them to the public.  The museum runs on a public and also a more private arena with exhibits open to the public but also housing an archives where employees process and catalogue artifacts for later use.  Even with a small staff for the size of the museum, there are a variety of activities offered throughout the year and changes in temporary exhibit spaces that provide variety to the public’s experience.  From the staff I have interacted with, I know that employees run educational programs for school groups, create exhibits, run the bookstore, provide security and maintenance to the building, and handle the financial needs of the museum.
Under the tutelage of Curator Brett Kelly and Museum Educator Bryan Guerrissi, I developed two learning objectives to be completed by the end of the internship which were to expose me to different aspects of museum work, specifically focusing on curatorial duties.  In my first objective, I sought to learn how museum exhibits are crafted and implemented.  Secondly, I desired to understand the duties and responsibilities of a museum curator.  Using a variety of resources and activities, I accomplished each objective to the satisfaction of my supervisor in addition to other skills I picked up by completing other tasks.
Work/Projects:
To complete my objectives, I was given opportunities to observe the curator at work and also aide in exhibit construction.  Starting in January with my internship, I came in as they were preparing for a new temporary exhibit.  For this project I helped the chief curator prepare labels for some of the artifacts that would be displayed, researching the items and crafting a concise and comprehensible blurb about them.  When it came time to install the exhibit, I watched and aided in the tear-down the previous exhibit and the construction of the new one.  This involved arranging artifacts around the space, hanging informational boards, and making the space accessible to all audiences.  Finally, I observed the maintenance staff rearranging the light fixtures to allow for optimum visibility, offering occasional suggestions on direction and intensity of the lighting.
Once that project was complete, I moved on to another more long term assignment in preparation for the publication by the museum of all the pertinent letters written by soldiers and a few civilians during and surrounding the Battle of Gettysburg.  This was a multi-step project involving collaboration with another intern.  With this project I first read through a set of the letters noting the people mentioned in each letter.  Later I researched and attempted to find each of these persons in order to write a short biography about them.  This part of the project was eventually moved more fully over to the other intern while I was placed on a separate task for the project.  I then moved onto creating network drives for each soldiers/civilians letter into which I placed a transcription of the letter and an edited scan of each page of the letter.  Any letters that did not have transcriptions already in the transcription library had to be transcribed as well.  This was an ongoing project that took several weeks.
Learning:
Going into this internship, I hoped to learn as much as I could about being a curator involves.  For me this meant working with the curator and observing his duties in the position.  During the first few weeks of the internship, I received hands-on experience in typical curatorial work by writing labels and figuring out how to construct an exhibit.  The curator really involved me in the decision and construction process, asking me how I felt about the arrangement of artifacts and information, and asking my opinion on the placing of materials.  Label writing offered another important experience in learning how to write concisely but also relay the significance of the object being displayed.  In addition, I was also able to observe how the curator worked throughout this process.
While the first few weeks granted me direct insight into how curators go about their job, once the temporary exhibit was completed, I was given more archival duties.  Through the process of working on the Gettysburg letters project, I learned how to operate scanning technology, edit scanned images of historic documents so they would be as legible as possible, organize data together, and transcribe and decipher nineteenth century script.  These tasks challenged my self-motivation and persistence as the different parts proved repetitive and isolating.  Of these skills, I found learning how to decipher and transcribe nineteenth century letters the most challenging and significant.  As will be discussed further below in my future plans, I hope to work in the public history field and will therefore have constant interaction with nineteenth century script.  Therefore reading a wide variety of handwritings has helped me to learn the typical patterns and practices of nineteenth century writers.
Future Plans:
From this experience, I see a career as a museum curator as a highly viable career choice.  Continuing my education after graduation to include more experience and learning on the techniques and skills associated with curatorial work will further prepare me for a career in this field.  This internship simply began a possible path to eventually follow.  Having really enjoyed constructing the exhibit, I intend to further explore the possibilities associated with curatorial work.
Preparation/Recommendations:
As part of my Public History Concentration to my History Major I took an introduction to Public History course that briefly explained the various career opportunities within public history.  Having done an internship the previous spring, I added this internship to my resume and experience to more fully understand different sides to the public history field.  Having been given the options, I used my internships to further explore them.  My other core courses in history that focus more on methodology and content prepared me to think critically and have basic knowledge of the subject area.  I would recommend that the Public History introductory course spend more time explaining the various paths within public history, perhaps taking field trips to museums, archives, and historic sites to learn about the various career paths.  For history students seeking an internship, I would recommend that the history department encourage student to take the Public History core course prior to doing an internship and that they take upper-level history courses to gain experience in thinking historically.  Any student pursuing a degree in history should have an experiential aspect to their experience as a history major in order to see how history is done in action.