One of the biggest jobs we have going on in the office right now, apart from summer camp, is prep for the exhibit set to be open in July. Every time I go in, I’m working on another few labels for the exhibit, which has its downsides due to the lack of identifying information on items so old, but overall, it has been a lot of fun to do! I find it to be a lot of fun researching really old radios, alarm clocks, phonographs, etc. It is a super interesting topic. One of the more funny (but still interesting items) I had to research and write a label for was a 1911 vacuum. The exhibit will include a lot of old technology, such as radios, tvs, phonographs, gramophones, 90s/00s video game consoles, etc., and so I’ve been tasked to identify them, research them, and write a small blurb on them. I think it’s a lot of fun to work with the old technology. It’s always been particularly interesting to me, and now learning about it is a part of my assigned tasks!

The staff member primarily in charge of collecting items for the exhibit brought in about twenty more items from someone who previously collected and now wants to see them preserved and in an exhibit. These items alone were just radios/clocks/alarm clock radios/etc., so I spent the day going through the items, looking for brand names, model numbers, serial numbers, or anything else that would be useful in identifying what the item is. Interspersed between that task, I would work on labels for a list I was given that contains a lot of old phonographs, old home video game consoles, etc. I’d write 1-3 paragraphs going over the history, their function, how it works, and so on. All of this took about a week and I just finished (until I’m assigned more as there’s still more items), so it was a very rewarding task, especially because I’ll get to see all of my work displayed in an exhibit!