Week 2: August 26th and 28th

    Hi everyone! This week, I finally got to begin my internship with the Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse and Museum. I arrived to my first day at 9:00am and was greeted by the museum's curator, Felipe de Paula, and fellow intern Holly. Once on site, Felipe introduced us to other staff members and gave us a brief tour of the museum's offices, archives, and the lighthouse property itself before taking us across the street to the newly opened Constance D. Hunter Historic Pacetti Hotel Museum which is operated by the lighthouse staff. Here, Felipe explained that although the museum was recently opened, its exhibits were not fully completed and that he imagined that is where most of our time would be spent during the interning process. After getting the grand tour, Felipe took us back to the office to let us get acquainted with PastPerfect, one of many museum inventory management systems available. Here, Felipe explained the process of accessioning or acquiring items for the museum's collection. He explained what an accession was and how to properly document them into PastPerfect so that the items involved could be easily recorded and located. He then let us play around with the software, showing us how to locate items, add items to a collection and change any information about them such as their location on the museum’s property or its description.

    On Wednesday, I got to go a bit more hands-on with PastPerfect. Felipe had Holly and me using PastPerfect to move items from their storage locations to their new locations within the Pacetti Hotel's exhibits. It was a fairly straightforward process. With every item that gets accessioned, it is attached to an accession number in the format of 2024-1-1. The first number being for the year, the second number being the accession itself, and the final number being the specific item found within that accession since one accession can include more than just one item. Once Felipe had collected every accession number for us, it was up to us to use PastPerfect to locate the item and move its recorded location in storage to its new location within the hotel. This was a great, early introduction into using the software and definitely helped me to familiarize myself with the program and its quirks since it is rather old. In any case, once we had completed that task, Felipe sent Holly and I over to the Pacetti Hotel itself to do a full inventory on the items on display. This consisted of going room to room and writing down every historical item featured in them. This helps the museum make sure they know where everything is, so they know what (if anything) needs to be moved either in person or through PastPerfect.

    Once those tasks were completed, Felipe explained that next week we would not meet on Monday due to labor day, but on Wednesday, we would go through the inventories Holly, and I had made to make sure everything that was on display at the hotel was properly labeled and documented in PastPerfect.

    Overall, I had great first week at the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse. All of the staff has been very kind and welcoming and Felipe seems very dedicated to making sure that Holly and I get to learn and experience as much as possible when it comes to museum curation and operation. I certainly look forward to the weeks to come when I can get started on some denser projects. Until next week!