Museum Studies Intern at Fort Ligonier Museum - Fall 2016
Over the summer I had the pleasure on interning in the Collections Department at Fort Ligonier Museum in Ligonier, PA. During my time at the museum I was able to work in many different capacities to help out their small staff of eight, full-time people. For the first two weeks of my internship I learned the background of Fort Ligonier in relation to the French and Indian War, how the museum and fort are run today, as well as getting acclimated to using PastPerfect, their museum cataloging software. However, over Memorial Day weekend the museum was hit with some strong weather conditions and after that my internship was a string of duties and tasks that varied from day to day. Some of these included taking inventory of artwork and collections, packaging and moving collections to a satellite storage facility, accessioning and photographing new collection items, assisting and leading schools tours, and facilitating large site events such as reenactments. While this is just a few of the many opportunities that I had this summer and many of them are unrelated to making one cohesive takeaway, I learned more this summer than I could have if I had stuck to my original purpose at the museum. I learned about handling and accessioning hundreds of years old artifacts and how to interpret their context within history and the museum and how to translate that message to visitors of all ages. I learned how important it is to work independently while also taking into consideration how to best help others. But above all else the most valuable thing I learned through my time at Fort Ligonier is that you never know what is going to happen at the end of the day and when working in a museum you always have to look for new and innovative ways of presenting information as hurtles come up.