Maitland A&H Summer Blog Entry 1

    Good day, my name is Ryan Humm, and I am a graduate student at the University of Central Florida. I am currently taking an internship over the summer. I am currently studying public history, a field of study that focuses on reaching out to the public and getting them interested in history. So far, I have taken the necessary classes dealing with public histories, such as intro to Public History, which provides the essential background knowledge on how to be a public historian. I have also taken classes in Historic Preservation and Oral history, both great classes that focus on Public history.

    The internship will allow me to learn about working with the public in a historical environment. My task will be to work at a museum. Those who work at a museum will most likely have a public history background. Curators, archivists, and other museum jobs usually are people who have studied public history. Like them, my task while working in the museum will be to work with archivists and learn their skills, as I will most likely work in this field in the future. My main task at the moment is to focus on the digitalization practice for Maitland A&H.

    Since last semester I have had the opportunity to intern for Maitland A&H. The internship I was tasked to do was working in their archives. My job was to scan documents into their library and use programs such as past perfect. Having the opportunity to scan these documents and photos is a valuable asset. It provides digital security that if these documents or pictures were lost, stolen, or damaged, a scanned copy would allow the museums to show off the work. For those who have not heard of Maitland A&H, the museum is both an art museum and a history museum. How such a place became is a unique history. The museum was once an art research studio and part of the Maitland historical society. The Art research center was created by Jules Andre Smith, a famous World War 1 war Artist who is well known for many of his art pieces. In the 1930s, Andre Smith would move to Maitland, Florida, to set up his studio and work with the young artist until he died in 1959. The second half of the museum is the house next to the research center. This house was the location of the Maitland historical society. The Historical Society was able to preserve Andre Smith’s studio and combine the two areas to create Maitland Art and History Museum.

    My goal with this blog is to explain to those thinking about wanting to become an archivist. Over the weeks, I will provide details of my job each week. Since my first visit, I have learned the basics of archival work, especially learning about the struggles of what it takes to be an archivist; such efforts deal with funding, protecting artifacts, and getting them to become digitized. Next week I will discuss these issues as each one could be a blog post. With the blogs, I am looking forward I discussing what I learned while working as an intern at Maitland A&H.