I finished scanning all the newspaper clippings today from the Wynn papers, so that means it’s time to give them an archival box of their own so they can be added to that collection. But, of course, it’s not a cut-and-dry matter. I can’t just throw photocopies in a box and shove it in with the collection, since that would make finding things really hard if someone was looking for a specific article. So, I’m now sorting them by year and date to put them in chronological order, or as close to chronological order as I can get.
All those fourteen files of newspaper condensed into around six files of photocopies.
I got a lot done today, and I’m really proud of myself! I’m hoping to get sorting done by the end of the week.
The other thing happening this week is that I’m going to be giving a tour! But not at the African American Museum of Iowa. Rather, I’m going to be giving a tour at the Veterans Memorial Building in downtown Cedar Rapids on Friday morning. The curator needed some extra help, so I volunteered to do tours this Friday and next Friday. I’m a little nervous, since I don’t have a lot of experience giving tours, but either way, I’m sure I will learn something.
In the morning, I was still sorting the photocopies into archival boxes. I’m almost done, and all that newspaper managed to fit in only two archival boxes! I’m honestly amazed that it didn’t take more.
In the afternoon, I actually had a lot going on for Welcome Desk Wednesday. Today, a tour group of 29 people came in first thing once the museum opened, and so, while I wasn’t the one doing the tour, I was still pretty busy with people asking me questions. Then, right after that, materials and props for the next temporary exhibit were delivered! It was really exciting to see everything come in and have the concept of the exhibit becoming more and more physical. Tomorrow, I’m hopefully going to help assemble some things that came, like a small play farmstand, a garden bed, a table, and, my personal favorite, an entire chicken coop! I’m really excited for it! But for today, I helped the curator get all the items upstairs to the office area. It was hard work getting all the unwieldy boxes onto a cart, and then getting that cart into an elevator, but I managed to get it done! After that, my day calmed down a bit, with a few more people coming into the museum. But this was the busiest Welcome Desk Wednesday I’ve had in a while!
We also have a new travelling exhibit up!
Oh boy, today was busy! It was all building all day. I helped assemble most of the props needed for the next temporary exhibit, most of which are going to be in a kids’ play corner. The hardest thing to build was the chicken coop, which was only a box-ish shelf contrary to what I thought it would be. The instructions weren’t clear, and so we were all mostly guessing on how to assemble it. But it still looks fantastic, and it houses a plush chicken just fine without falling over! The only thing that’s still left to do is to cut some foam for a play garden that will be inside the garden beds we built today! It’s going to be a little hard, since the beds are made of round corrugated metal, but I’m sure we’ll do our best!
We managed to build all this in a day!; Our newly-assembled picket fences
I actually had a lot of fun today! It was a lot of work, and there was a lot of re-working stuff until it fit, but I’m still really proud of everything we did.
Today, I was supposed to give a tour of the Veterans Building in Cedar Rapids. More specifically, I was going to talk about a stained glass window designed by Grant Wood that’s in the south side of the building.
This is the window!
Unfortunately, no one came for the tour. It was a little disappointing, but hopefully I’ll get some people next Friday!
I ended up going back to the AAMI in the afternoon and finished up sorting and filing newspaper photocopies and other papers from the Wynn collection. So now, the first pass-through is officially done! Next, I’m going to have to go through each box to make sure that everything is where it needs to be, and I’ll start making proper labels for the museum’s finding guide.