So long from Sarah!

Who knew 3 months would fly by so quickly! It is remarkable to look back at everything I was able to accomplish during my time with ANSM. I’m glad that some of my projects will leave an impression on the Nova Scotian museum community, since you have definitely had an impact on me and my learning! 

During my internship, I worked on a wide variety of projects. I created three new NovaMuseEd activities about domestic textiles – quilts, hooked rugs, and samplers, to be specific – and an extra activity about the Canadian Census. I was even able to translate one of my textile activities into French to connect to the Conseil scolaire acadien provincial curriculum! I also frequently worked with CollectiveAccess in a number of ways. First, I reviewed the CollectiveAccess manual and tutorial videos to identify where the materials should be updated. After becoming familiar with the system and its training materials, I created two new training modules for sites to use when training new staff or looking for a refresher. I also spent a lot of time cleaning data. By the end of my internship, I worked through 20 sites’ databases to review over 12,000 entities!

red = SME work
blue = entity clean-up

Besides this, I have been working with Karin to develop a new condition reporting feature on CollectiveAccess. Based on what our survey respondents said, hopefully the new condition reporting tab will be helpful! Throughout the last month of my internship, I have been working with SMEs to enrich domestic textile records on NovaMuse. In the end, with the help of my two SMEs, Scott Robson and Anita Price, I was able to enrich around 90 object records!

I learned so many things that will be helpful during my future career in museums – from how to answer tricky questions during site visits, to being able to write Facebook posts highlighting your collections. I worked on projects that made what I learned in class make so much sense, and I also learned things I never could have in a classroom. I look forward to using everything I learned and accomplished during my time with ANSM as I continue learning about and working in museums. I am so grateful to the ANSM team and to everyone who has supported my learning during my time “in” Nova Scotia. Now I know how many great museums there are to visit once I finally make it out to Nova Scotia!