Week 3: September 4th

     Good evening, everybody! This week, I was only at the lighthouse for one day due to Labor Day, however, I still got to do something interesting. In the morning on Wednesday, September 4th, I continued learning my way around PastPerfect, the museum's archiving software. Instead of simply relocating items in PastPerfect from their storage locations to their display locations, Felipe had Holly and I accessioning a few items from the beginning, detailing what the items were, when they were created and used, and who gave them to the museum. Felipe advised us that, while this was one of the more tedious processes involved with museum curation, it was very important to do correctly so that items can be easily located even if you only have a limited amount of information about an item. If an item has been accessioned correctly, you should be able to find items within PastPerfect even if you only know that an item was a fork, and it was donated by John Doe. If that's all you know, you should be able to locate all of John Doe's accessions and then isolate any forks you see. We even got to put this new skill to the test too when a member of the museum's staff came into the offices looking for a book on native Florida plants. We did not have any more information to go off of than that, but we were able to locate the book by searching in PastPerfect. We went the library section in the software and then used the search function to search terms like "Florida", "native", and "plants". Once we had received our results, we simply scrolled through each one until we had found the book the staff member was looking for. From there all we had to do to locate the book was read out the corresponding library code that was filled out when the book was accessioned. Then you just find the code on the bookshelf in the office's small library. Getting to locate the book was a nice practice run on PastPerfect and helped me to understand the importance of correctly labeling items when you accession them, since even a small misspelling could result in an item being impossible to locate within the system.

    After getting some more practice in with PastPerfect, Felipe then brought Holly and I across the street to the Pacetti Hotel to help him with getting the museum's exhibits finished. There were a series of shelves within the Caretaker's room of the Pacetti Hotel that were all decorated with old pieces of china, glassware and crystal that was recovered from the Hotel before restoration began. However, the plexiglass for the exhibit has not been finished yet and so the shelves and the pieces had to be removed and placed in the staff-only kitchen for storage until they can be put out on display. This collection of items is what Felipe had us tackling for the rest of the day. He instructed us to go through each shelf and photograph each piece so that he could easily identify what items were located there without having to walk across the street to the hotel from the lighthouse every time. It is goal that once the plexiglass has been added and the shelves go back up in the Caretaker's room, we can all go through the pictures and move the items' locations in PastPerfect like we did last week. This will also let us know what, if anything, needs to be accessioned into the system. Once we collected our photos, Felipe sent us home.

    Overall, a short week thanks to the holiday, but still one that I feel was very productive. Even though it may not sound like much, I appreciate getting to learn more about PastPerfect and being to get more familiar with it. I also enjoyed the photographing even if it was a bit tedious. It was interesting to be able to go into a room in a museum no one else is allowed to be in. I also thought that many of the items Felipe had us photographing were very cool. I will be sure to ask him next week if I can share any photos of these. Thanks for reading everyone!