MacGyver

Part of being a graduate student is being able to take ideas and present them in new, unique ways. If you've read past posts, you'll remember the project we were assigned during orientation week. We were given clues on notecards and told to figure out what the clue was talking about, then to take those people and place and include them in a video that also advertised Cooperstown and the Graduate Program. This is what we came up with, I hope you like it! Click here, or watch it below!

Are We Disconnected?

Tonight my roommate Ginny and I were sitting having dinner, and we got into a really great discussions about the current situation of museums in the world. She told me about a video she had run across on YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaFbmuEUdwI, which is a very slow moving but interesting commentary on one opinion about the museum world. While satirical, it gives a good jolt to those of us being educated as the next group of museum professionals. Though I would argue strongly against the need to put a museum into a box, it is true that we guide visitors by choosing certain objects to display, writing and desiging exhibits and plaques for individual objects. I am curious as to what others feel about this. Is it the job of a museum curator or educator to guide a visitor? Should exhibits be set up with only the most basic framework, allowing visitors to travel through and interpret without guidance? And are museum professionals, as college educated and beyond, unable to identify with the general public, most of whom do not have masters degrees?

Ginny and I were also discussing the difficulties of living history museums and the application of this question. In living history, there is a very strong interpretation of the history being presented. That is why those people who wear period clothing and talk to visitors are called "interpreters". Is this the right way of presenting history to the public? Or are we cutting ourselves off to other possibilities by giving interpreters or docents a set script to work off of?

I don't have a good answer to this one. If anyone does, I'd love to hear it. Our first year class is getting geared up to help the Oneonta World of Learning discuss their plans for a building for their museum, and this is one of the issues we as a class are trying to tackle. What do you think?

Visitor Services

It is always nice to have your ideas confirmed. I've always been a very strong advocate for living history style museums, or outdoor/open air museums. Although I was originally not going to be able to take the class because it was scheduled at the same time as our Research and Fieldwork course, but because I wanted to take it as well as a number of other first years, they rescheduled the class so we can take it now! The book that was our first reading is called Life Stages of the Museum Visitor, by Wilkening and Chung. We read the first three chapters for class last week, and they talked about the different age groups that visit museums, including a breakdown of the different generations and what experiences have shaped their lives. One of my favorite parts was a breakdown of what exactly visitors want in outdoor museums. The top responses were for interactive, engaging interpretations and demonstrations from workers in period clothing...exactly the way I have worked for the last three seasons, and what I believe to be one of the most effective ways of connecting with visitors of all ages. Yay!

Things Always Happen For a Reason

In February 2008 I was home from Wartburg for our break. I was on my way to Michigan to see three of the friends who I had studied in France with. On my way out to my car, I hit the remaining tiny patch of ice on my driveway, slipped, and fell backwards onto my back. I threw my left arm back to catch myself, and landed pretty squarely onto my left shoulder, hard enough that I went back inside to have my veterinarian mother take a look. True, dogs and people are built differently, but a broken bone is a broken bone and I was worried. She didn't see anything wrong, so I grabbed an ice pack and drove to Michigan. That was the start of what has been over a year and a half of doctors visits, tests, injections and frustration. I started experiencing pain in my shoulder and arm in March, a month after my fall, and began visiting doctors. Unfortunately, my diagnosis remained elusive until June of this year, which meant a frustrating and less than involved senior year at Wartburg and many long, painful nights. In June, after being told my only option was to implant electrodes into my spinal column as a pain management technique and still without an official and correct diagnosis, my mother and I flew to Colorado to see a doctor out there. Three doctors and an expensive change of flights later, I finally had a diagnosis; subscapular bursitis and scapular dyskinesia with nerve damage down my left arm. Throughout the summer, I saw a physical therapist near my hometown and have seen a 60% improvement in a very short time.

Unfortunately, having just moved across the country, I have not yet had the opportunity to meet with a new physcial therapist. The earliest available appointment for the pt clinic in town is the 23rd. In the meantime I have a number of stretches and exercises I can do, but within the last three days I have seen a marked downturn. That all culminated this morning with me getting sick from the pain in my neck while we were being introduced to the Milne Library in Oneonta.

This is an aspect of my graduate education that I would much prefer to do without. During the late spring and early summer, before going to Colorado, I was very uncertain as to whether I would be able to attend the program this fall. Having seen such an improvement this summer was reassuring, and I had hoped that it would not be an issue once classes started. Unfortunately that is not the case, but rest assured I will do all I can to prevent any other flare-ups and to remain ahead with my classwork.

On a different note, there has been some good that has come out of this. Throughout my life I have been blessed enough to be fairly healthy. This last year and a half, though, has exposed me to aspects of the museum world that I had not thought about before. Simple things, like ensuring that doors can easily be opened. Sometimes, if I'm carrying things in my right arm and am faced with a turn knob door, I have to wait for help or set down my load and figure out how to get through it before it closes again.

This has sparked an interest in issues of accesibilty in museums, especially in living history museums. How do museums accomedate handicap visitors? Is there a "favor" to a certain type of handicap, i.e. wheelchair bound, visually impaired, etc? What services are museums providing for mentally handicapped and learning impaired visitors? This topic is one that I am considering strongly for a thesis idea. If I decide on another topic, at the very least it is something I would like to explore and to ensure that whatever museum I work at aims to improve.

First Day

Although for the last two weeks we have met as a group, today is our first official day of classes with the first seesion of our material cultures course. Our reading for the day was "What is Print", a brief but thorough intoduction to several different processess through which prints are made.

During my time at Living History Farms, I worked in the 1875 Print Shop for a short time. I hope that, going into today's class, I have a good working knowledge of at least the basics of print making, though job and newspaper printing is quite different from art printing I am sure.

This afternoon we will continue our task of editing our class video project. If you read earlier, you saw that during Orientation Week we were all given cards containing phrases or names. Our task was to identify the person, place or thing referenced on the card, then to put together a video advertising the Cooperstown Graduate Program and the town of Cooperstown as well. Our project is coming together quite nicely. I am on the editing crew, and we're getting into our second big round of editing. Sunday afternoon we met as well and spent a solid five and half hours working on the introduction and importing the film. It has been a really interesting experience, and something I have never done with quite as much depth. In high school, I made commercials for the French and Drama clubs, but that was quite awhile ago. The process seems to have become much more technical over the years, but I am very glad to have the opportunity to learn how it works. Mandy, who is one of my roommates, has worked extensively with the History Day project in Minnesota, and comes to us with a great deal of experience in all things film. Once our project is complete, we will present it to the NYSHA staff as well as post it to youtube. I will include a link to the clip here!

Research Week

This last week we spent almost entirely with Will Walker, the history professor on our staff. He teaches Research and Fieldwork to all of the first years, and we also have the option of taking his American Cultures course. We spent the majority of our time getting acquainted with those resources that will be available to us. Because our building is under construction, we are currently being housed in the New York State Historical Association (or, NYSHA), specifically in their library. We are also in close proximity to the Feminore Art Museum (http://fenimoreartmuseum.blogspot.com/) and the Farmer's Museum (http://thefarmersmuseum.blogspot.com/), both of which are right next door.We are are also affiliated with the Oneonta campus, and have an in with another nearby university. This means that we have access to a tremendous amount of resources. We were introduced to the variety of collections stored in the Library, which includes letters written and signed between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. I actually got to touch them!! We also have an extensive photography and Native American collection at the Fenimore Art Museum, as well as an amazingly diverse collection between Fenimore and the Farmers museum stored off site in a converted stable. There they have a collection of everything from quilts and clothing to presidential life masks. I'm so excited to get the chance to explore the material culture side of things; that starts next week with my material cultures class.

Though we did set aside our research on Wednesday to get a quick introduciton to the subject with our prof, but the primary purpose was, in fact, research. To check that we were absorbing the information we were being given, we were issued "Research Challenges". Our first task, the prison assignment I described in an earlier post, went pretty well. We also were given an assigment, as I briefly described earlier, in which we were supposed to choose a historic marker and research the event which it describes. The marker that Mandy and I had was about the Cherry Valley "Masacre", an attack by the British and Native American troops.

Well, I'll try to write more later, but we're having a "Last Chance to Wear White" party, and there's still work to do before people come over!

A Quick Assignment

Think about whatver historical markers you have in your area. Who are they about? What do they actually say? Do they give the full story of what really happened? We had a research assignment where we examined New York historic markers and found most of them lacking. I'll add more about this later!

Waltz with Bashir

If you have never seen the documentary film Waltz with Bashir, I highly, highly recommend you see it. It is an animated documentary detailing an Israeli man's attempt to remember his involvement in the massacres at Sabra and Shatila in September of 1982. The overall Palestinian-Israeli conflict is something I have had the chance to study on multiple occasions during my career, including touching on it in multiple history and international relations courses at Wartburg and spending an entire semester on the topic during my time in Nantes, France.

The goal of having us watch the film was not necessarily to educate us more about the subject itself, but to show us how fickle memory can be. The main character has no memory of the incident himself, and so attempts to learn details from those he believed may have been there with him. The whole idea of the changing nature of a memory makes for some frustration for those attempting to conduct interviews in oral history, which we will be doing later this semester.

Overall though, it is a darkly moving film that I recommend watching on a day when it is okay to be sad and more than a little shaken up after the viewing. As to how tricky my own research in oral history will prove, only time will tell.

Titles

Today we started our Research Week. Our professor is making sure we're all up to speed on our research skills. We had a quick project where each team was given a historic question. My group was asked to track the problems of prison systems and the changes that were enacted in the 19th Century. Our job was to find a primary source for each member of the group, six of us, to develop a thesis that would lead to further research, and to present our findings to the class. My particular source was the second annual report of the New York Prison Association, which was formed in 1845 to help bring about needed reforms in the state's prison systems. Our group's winning source went to Maria, who found an Ohio tour book put together by a prison warden to advertise how well kept his particular prison was.

Our other excercise, and one which was extremely interesting, was wandering through the stacks to pick out remarkable titles. There were some pretty awesome ones; mine was something like Zohlan on Sculpture, by William Zohlan. The last name is probably incorrect there, but you get the point. Our professors goal with this exercise was to talk about the importance of picking a good title. For someone just browsing the stacks, that's all they'll see, and if it isn't interesting enough there is no reason for them to pick up your book. I highly recommend the idea of browsing through the sections of your library now to check out some of the horribly wonderful titles. You'll know what I mean if you do.

The biggest shocks today were that, first, the library already has space on its shelves for our theses. How terrifying is that? Secondly, we are both encourage and almost expected to submit some of the papers we will write over the next two years for publication. They kept telling us today that we are professionals now, something which it seems I had never processed before. I promise though that I will do my best to place my work here for you to read it, and to help me critique it first! Soon to come, a list of ideas for my thesis.

Craft of Resarch, 1-4

Starting tomorrow, we will begin our first Research Week. We will be conducting research projects, and I believe making sure our research skills are up to graduate level speed. We also have times scheduled as Research Challenges; it will be interesting to see what those turn out to be.

In preparation, we were asked to read the first four chapters of "The Craft of Research" by Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb and Joseph M. Williams. The main point of the first chapters is trying to teach writers how to frame their writing in a way that actually interests readers. It is very, very similar to what I read at Wartburg in the Turabian manual. It always fascinates me, and I know that I am as guilty of this as any, how unreadable we make ourselves. Both Turabian and the Craft of Research stress the importance of finding the answer to the questions "so what?" Without that answer, readers won't care, and readers who don't care won't waste their time on what you have written.

That being said, here is my "so what." I'm writing this blog to tell you, my reader, about my life as a student here at CGP? To that, we'll put the question. So what? So, my classmates and I are the future of museums. We will go on, like those before us, to become directors of national associations, to run museums around the world from the ground up, and to educate the public about the importance of the past. This is to show you how all of that starts. I hope that is a good enough so what for you.

Orientation Week

The Cooperstown Graduate program in Cooperstown, New York, began training "creative, entrepreneurial museum professionals committed to programs for the public good" in 1964. (http://www.oneonta.edu/academics/cgp/about/history.html) My class, to graduate in 2011, consists of fourteen women and three men all working to become those entrepreneurial professionals. Interests of the group range from Dutch immigrant history to solving the problems caused by No Child Left Behind for museum education programs. We will spend the next two years challenging ourselves to learn everything there is to know about museums, about ourselves, and about this place we're calling home until graduation.

We spent the last week going through the process of orientation and getting settled into our homes. After unfortunately having our fourth roommate put off coming to the program due to illness, my house is composed of two other girls. Mandy, from Minnesota and Ginny from Virginia. Mandy is very interested in bringing history and museums to the Web. Ginny's interests lie in textiles, especially clothing from the Civil War era. For myself, I love living history, and am hoping to find out how to do it well. We were in temporary housing until Thursday, displaced by the Glimmerglass Opera Company. We finally got moved in, and have spent what free time we've had sorting our spices into alphabetical order, organizing the junk drawers and moving ourselves into our rooms. We're finally settled, and are now able to turn our attentions to the reason we're here.

Last week we did a tremendous amount of work learning about the program, expectations, team building, conflict resolution and many other things. A lot of what we did was learning how we, as a group of seventeen, will work together. We're just a smidge too small to have representatives attend council meetings on behalf of their classmates, but too big to have everyone have all of their opinions be heard in an orderly manner. We worked very hard over the course of several days to record class bylaws to help us maintain order throughout the course of our next two years.

Of all the sessions we attended, the most interesting one discussed the changing role of technology in museums. We were introduced to Google Reader, as well as the currents uses of blogs and Twitter in museums. As a result of that session, I have decided to keep a blog for my time here. My primary goal will be to record my thoughts on our readings, our professional seminars and the impact that the program is having on my goals as a museum professional.