By Clara Chang
I spent my first two weeks at the Museum Resource Center reviewing the NPS Museum Handbooks and familiarizing myself with the various surrounding parks. My talented and amazing supervisor, Jami Lanier, took me on a quick tour of Fort Raleigh and the Outer Banks Group Headquarters, so that I could meet other NPS staff and learn more about the history on Roanoke Island. Throughout the week, we also traveled to the Wright Brothers National Monument, as we aided in hanging a portrait of the Wright brothers up in the visitor center. On Friday my first week, we also responded to some minor vandalism at the top of the Bodie Island Lighthouse.
Figure 1: Bodie Island Light Station
Figure 2: Me in Front of the Outer Banks of North Carolina
At the Museum Resource Center, I started the project of organizing and sorting boxes of photos, ranging from negatives, to slides, to stacks of developed photos. They included shots of all the various national parks in the area, including some not in the local area. I was merely breaking the surface of this organizational task by separating the photos into the different parks that they depicted. Jami then had me focus on the Fort Raleigh collection of photos and pick up where her last volunteer left off, displaying the photos in plastic sleeves, labeling them, and placing them in chronological order in various archival boxes/binders. During these first two weeks, we also made preparations for the upcoming 20th anniversary of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse Move.
Figure 3: Sorting Boxes of Various items at the Museum Resource Center