This post is part of our Internship Spotlight series. For this installment, Abigail Watson (’26) tells us about her internship experience at the Edmonds Historical Museum.
The Vastness of Small Museums
I am a second year Museology student at the University of Washington, and I recently completed my internship at the Edmonds Historical Museum. I sought out an internship with Edmonds for a few reasons; I wanted to get hands-on experience working in a museum’s collection space, I wanted to work with a history museum, but most importantly: I wanted to work in a small museum. Small museums operate very differently than large scale institutions. The funding is quite different; the staff size is smaller–and often receives the help of many volunteers. The Edmonds Historical Museum was even founded by a group of volunteers in 1973. So, what makes a small museum so special? The amount of passion, patience, and determination that they run on.
I chose a “collections” internship. This means I was working under the Collections Manager, Allyson, and would learn how to take care of objects that are held by the museum. Though Edmonds is considered a small museum, its collection is vast, containing around 30,000 objects. And if you have visited the museum, you will know that only a fraction of that is on display. This fraction is expected, as most museums only have a tiny portion of their collections on exhibit. Even large institutions such as The British Museum and the Smithsonian state that they only have 1% of their entire collection on display. This is part of the reason museums like to change out objects and do interesting exhibits, especially for smaller museums since their exhibit space tends to be smaller, allowing different components of the collection to see the light of day!
The Edmonds team had recently conducted an entire collection move from their previous storage in Mukilteo down to the Edmonds’s waterfront in Harbor Square. My internship began with the unpacking component of the move. The Collections Manager, Allyson, had developed a system for where objects should go. For example, a “Textiles Room” where all the fabric and clothes items are stored, or a room with shelving to hold oversized prints and paintings. Objects that did not fit in boxes were stored openly on shelves, which also allows for display of some interesting items in the collection.
My main objective was to unpack objects from their moving boxes and put them in their new home. After we finished the general unpacking, it was on to inventory! Inventorying is recording an object’s exact location and the condition of the object in the museum’s online database. The other interns and I would patiently go through each object, making sure to take note of objects that needed extra care or perhaps belonged elsewhere.
A collection managers’ job is not only about keeping the collections space organized, it is also about ensuring public access to the collections. Allyson’s goals with the move to Harbor Square were to create a space that would allow the public to research, view, and learn about Edmond’s history and culture through these objects by providing access to the museum’s collection. Inside Harbor Square, the team has also been building a library and an archive space– all with this same goal.
I wanted to learn what being a Collections Manager is firsthand. I wanted to know what the job entails: following best practices and methods for care and storage, what to do in unexpected scenarios, and making the most of what is in your wheelhouse. Specifically, I got to learn some simple conservation methods that can be life savers.
Allyson had our conservation classroom set up for us to learn what to do in a few scenarios.
First lesson: A sprinkler has burst, and about 300 books in your collection have gotten wet! What can you do? Hair dryers! We learned how to carefully dry the books by going over pages in small batches, and how to support the spines with cardboard. This was all done using regular ol’ hair dryers, paper towels, cardboard, and patience.
Second lesson: You have an old sign that is covered in scuffs, what is a way to remove a bit of dirt easily? Try using clean erasers. Specifically, this method is done by grinding up the erasers into tiny shavings and then gently rubbing across the scuffs. The shavings are delicate enough to remove the grime, but do not harm the object. This is one of those budget-friendly, easy to do methods that can really add to an institution’s conservation practices.
Third Lesson: We learned how to sew a new binding in a magazine. This is both a conservation method to fix the object, but also is a preservation practice, because we want to prevent future damage to the object. It might seem counter intuitive to poke holes in something fragile but strengthening it is the correct course of action to reduce future damage.
Fourth lesson: How to flatten out a curled-up photograph. By using the power of water and evaporation, placing this photograph in a homemade water chamber, (Tupperware and a cooling rack) we were able to unfurl it by hydrating the photograph in the chamber, and using a cardstock weight to delicately flatten it.
These lessons were only a fraction of my learning experience while interning at Edmonds. I got a good look at how collections works, and I can’t wait till the museum is fully ready to welcome visitors to the Harbor Square location. The final image is of an object that was a favorite of many of the interns; it is a Victorian Era Sheep pulley toy on wheels. It is just one of the 30,000 objects cared for by the museum, and there are so many cool objects to be viewed in the collections space. Thank you so much to the Edmonds Historical Museum and to their Collections Manager, Allyson for providing such an insightful experience.