Week 4

This week was the first of what seems like many more exciting weeks to come. This week we finally began archiving in the museum! We only came in one day on Thursday but we we’re able to begin working immediately on our project, which I will further discuss. First and foremost however when we did arrive we were greeted by two alumni volunteers, who aided us as we began searching for what to do. The two were also very excited to see what we had to do because they were also at the screening for the Marching Forward documentary that we showed last weekend. Nonetheless before we even started looking for things to do one of the alumni named Barbara Burns, who also happened to be in the documentary that we screened last weekend, surprised me with some very crucial information. As we arrived waiting for me was a printed list of distinguished alumni that seemed to be used beforehand for Jones High School’s curriculum for their own version of freshman orientation. She also had a document for my internship partner Kyle, which was two packets that were also used during their freshman orientation that contained detailed histories of Jones High School that dated back to its foundation. Even though for him the histories might have just been useful for scanning and looking for information he might have missed, for me the list of distinguished alumni was great because it contained information that I’d never seen before. I was excited about having this new list of people to research but more good news was on the way for me. As we were figuring out which tasks me and Kyle would do I was told that there was a desk that contained folders with alumni information and the inner historian in me nearly leaped out of my body. As Kyle was off creating a spreadsheet of different potential collection locations, I dove deep into the desk of alumni information and had an absolute field day. Among resumes and newspaper clippings, the most important thing that I found was biographies that seemed to already been written by former museum curator Audrey Rickerts. Now with this new wealth of information I’m going to be able to begin constructing a quick biography of Jones High alum who have gone on to make a difference after their high school career. Next week I should be wrapping up gathering information on the alumni in the desk and hopefully be moving on to a different collection in the museum.