Hi, my name is Keagan and I am one of the summer students at the museum this year. I am currently studying at Simon Fraser University entering my fourth year as a history major in the fall. I have always been the child who dragged everyone to museums, and so it is my greatest joy to be able to work at one. I am really excited to be working in the museum this summer as I have always dreamed about being involved in a museum environment. The museum is an amazing opportunity for me as I want to continue along this path and make a career out of it once I finish school.

What I worked on this summer was updating the collections room. I re-racked the storage and organized the items in the room. This took a lot of time, as it meant that everything had to be pulled off the shelves, shelves cleaned, the artifacts re-accessioned (looking that their descriptions were correct, a photograph was taken, and that they were in the correct location),and then placed back onto the shelves. The shelf that was focused on was the "Communications category" so anything from that category was placed onto the shelves I organized. It started easy as we moved around the items and got the shelves empty, but then it started to get more difficult. Items were missing?! Not entirely a shock, they get picked up and put down, or put on display and then just don't get updated into the regular location database. This led to a scavenger hunt around the museum. Luckily most of the items were relatively easy to find, but some required a lot of time and effort. Once finished the shelves were organized and easy to find an artifact. The goal was to be able to find an artifact in under three minutes, from knowing the accession number to having the item in your hand. I know the communications category that was now possible.

I am going to continue doing small volunteer work in the fall with the museum while I finish the last year of my degree. Although the collections work I did is "finished" the job is never done, and there's always lots of scanning, photographs, accessioning, and other jobs to work on. I know there is always a place for those who want to discover and learn about history here.

August 2016.