STORIES

This week I officially began my internship at Banting House National Historic Site! I suspect my first week was different than most as I am certainly no stranger to this museum, having spent the last 8 months coming in once or twice a week for my Graduate Student Assistantship. I walked in on my “first” day and completely reorganized how the archives were stored, which I had been planning to do for awhile now, but is still fun to say I did Day 1.

I spent a good chunk of this week locked away (by my own free will) in the basement of Banting House. While visitors may not even think about the basement at all as they enjoy all the exhibits on display in the other levels, I am buried deep in the bowels of Banting House where I am accompanied by all the items that are not on display, and it was my mission this week to start the process of inventorying our collection. It is very important in a museum to be able to locate items when you need them, which is why we have a catalogue of our collection on a system called PastPerfect that includes information on location. Unfortunately, not all of our records were very detailed in terms of where they were stored, and artifacts and archives have been moved over the years without these changes being documented which can make it difficult at times to reliably find these items. I took it upon myself to not only confirm that items in the collection were where they should be, but also reorganize our storage to make finding artifacts and archives a process that was quick and easy!

Inventorying is an ongoing process that will take time to complete, but knowing that we are working toward a more organized storage system and that eventually every record on PastPerfect will have a reliably confirmed location as of 2025 makes me feel great! Better organization in the basement will certainly make my job easier when I need to find an item in the collection, both because the location record will be detailed and because I am familiarizing myself with everything in the process of inventorying. Just the other day, my boss asked me to find something for him, and because I had just seen what he was looking for while marking down its location, I was able to grab it for him very quickly. Already in my “first” week, I’m feeling more confident in my knowledge of the collection and I feel like I am doing something important that makes my job easier and makes the jobs of everyone that will come after me a little easier as well!

I am excited for the work that is yet to come this summer!