Maitland A&H Blog Entry 2

     Since the last time, a lot has happened when working with the Maitland Art and History Museum. My idea of understanding what the job was about was semi-correct. My job is to scan documents with a scanner, so the museum has a digital copy of the object, but there is more to it than just a simple scan. The things that I deal with must be documented before they can be scanned. Such a document describes the object with a descriptive title, the author, the date of production, the object's size, and if the thing has an already identification number. Most of the time, I can fill out all form sections except for the author and the identification number. Once I fill out the form, I can scan the object. Most of my objects tend to be written works, but sometimes I have scanned photos. It is clumsy of me to have not taken a photo of the process, but in the next blog, images will be added to show the reader what the process looks like and see the quantity of how much one-fold can hold. To give the reader an idea of what can be done in one day, I could process only two folders and document them. It took another day of work to scan all the items. The task may be seen as slow and tedious is necessary for the museum.

    Now I view my work as unique compared to the other tasks given out to the other students as my job requires almost no research to be done. The only thing I have learned is what I can read when I have downtime. The current box that I am working on deals with the Waterhouse family. I have learned a little about William Waterhouse and the house he had built. I learned that Waterhouse traveled to Florida after the civil war and helped build up the Maitland community. The house has been around since 1884 and, since then, has still been part of the community. Waterhouse did fight in the Cavalry for New York and was in Gettysburg and eventually became a Prisoner of war. As a prisoner, he was sent to Andersonville, the worst prisoner camp of the civil war. So far, this has been the only information I was able to learn while working at the museum, as the job given to me does not provide much information to know.

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