First Week on the Job (5/17/21-5/21/21)

I am William McCoy an undergraduate student of history at UCF. This summer I am interning at the Winter Garden Heritage Foundation. This is my first experience with archive or museum work and I was really excited to begin working. This work seems perfect for me because I love history of all kinds. I would find almost anything old to be interesting, from a family photo to tax records. All items no matter how mundane they may seem have historical value. Although to some they may seem boring, I find them exciting because of what you can learn about our past through them.

 My internship projects are to help put together some exhibits for the museum. Including one about the history of Winter Garden's movie theaters, and one about the various professions the people of Winter Garden have practiced in the past and today. In addition, I will accession items into the archive, write social media posts and other various tasks to help the foundation.

Through my work I plan to gain knowledge of how to navigate an archive, and how to treat the priceless items contained within one. I want to hone my research and writing skills. By designing an exhibit I will learn what items, documents and photos are best to display to the public to stimulate appreciation of history, in addition to gaining an understanding of the practical design aspects of exhibits. It is my dream to work with history and as such it is crucial that I develop these skills.

I have already learned a lot in my first week. I spent time adding photos to the archive and learning how to use the database software, PastPerfect. Then I began my research on movie theaters and Winter Garden work in earnest. So far, I have collected a lot of really great items for the exhibit. For example, a scrapbook filled with fliers and articles relating to a campaign to save a Winter Garden drive-in theater from the 1990's. Its an item that tells a great story and is perfect for the exhibit. Of course, the collection of photos in the Archive is tremendous and there are so many interesting and great ones but I am confident that I will be able to pick the ones that best tell the narratives of Winter Garden.

In the future I look forward to continuing my research. I quickly adapted to using the computer to find objects in the archive and looking through the archive itself to find pertinent information. Over the course of my first week I began to work more efficiently as I got settled with my duties. Next week I hope to continue this trajectory and learn more about working in an archive along with more history of Winter Garden and Central Florida.


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