The Taber Museum has added two intern-volunteers for the summer of 2019. Both attend local colleges and both are getting a fair amount of experience with the everyday ups and downs of museum work.
Erin, a rising senior History major/ Anthropology minor, has been helping us in many capacities, most notably tackling our backlog of donations to be cataloged. This includes describing, measuring, photographing, and storing a wide variety of materials, ranging from school yearbooks to rocking horses to a Christmas stocking. Erin also assisted with the installation and label-writing for our summer exhibit of needlework samplers, unpacking and arranging items for our YesterShoppe yard sale, choosing and planting annuals in our front flower beds, and transporting loaned items for the Hometown Teams exhibit at the Madigan Library. There was also a certain amount of mopping up water from some recent rain-related leaks, but we hope that will not be her lasting impression.
While Erin has taken on all of these tasks with equal industriousness and good humor, she admits a particular fondness for a project that involves our textile collection or going into our 3-dimensional storage area and seeing all the objects on the shelves. Erin started her internship here slightly early because at the end of July she will be moving on to another internship in Bucks County, researching the role of colonial women in the Revolutionary War. This is fitting, as early American history is one of her areas of interest. She also has an interest and experience in educational programming, and may explore that side of museum work post graduation.
When she is not busy with the academic and career side of things, Erin enjoys singing with the college choir and, when she happens to be in Ireland, aerial dancing.
A second intern this summer is Olivia Wetherhold, a resident of Muncy and a student at Susquehanna University. She is majoring in Anthropology and minoring in Museum Studies. she is not busy with the academic and career side of things, Erin enjoys singing with the college choir and, when she happens to be in Ireland, aerial dancing.
Her internship at the Lycoming County Historical Society was interrupted with the opportunity to participate in archaeological digs in Volubillis and Challa, Morocco! While there, she assisted with the restoration of Roman mosaics, visited a number of museums, listened to a lecture on the water scarcity in the country, explored medinas (old) marketplaces, saw where the film Gladiator with Russell Crowe was made, saw the new Star Wars movie being filmed, visited the second largest mosque in the world, and yes, rode camels in the Sahara Desert.
Returning to LCHS, we could offer no camel rides, but we did have a caravan-load of new materials to be added to the collection. Olivia has been extremely helpful in accessioning and cataloguing artifacts. She was instrumental in picking out objects and filling out the appropriate paperwork for our participation in the Hometown Heroes exhibit which is in partnership with the Smithsonian and being displayed at the Madigan Library, Pennsylvania College of Technology. Olivia will be a rising senior in the fall. She hopes to pursue graduate school and participate in more archaeological digs.