On Monday, June 8th, I was assigned my first real task at the museum. A set of artifacts from a Vietnamese POW camp had been donated to the museum some days or weeks prior. I was first tasked with removing all of the artifacts from the plastic tub they were in and photographing them in all their detail.
It was all personal items. Primarily clothing. Actually, almost all of it was clothing. Several shirts and trousers, one boonie hat, one pair of short shorts which I assume were probably underwear. But there was also a small bag with toothpaste and brushes, and one confusing large tarp. That tarp appeared to be made of a pair of pants that were sewed into one large piece.
As for the photos themselves. I was asked to take pictures of every aspect of the items: front, back, sides, top, bottom, and inside if applicable. Some items, like the pants and weird tarp proved slightly difficult to take pictures of. They were too large to get in one go for the most part. For some of the pictures I had help from Vivienne, who was also a student at UWF a few years ago. She took a number of the pictures while I laid the artifacts out. But she only helped for a handful of pictures before being moved over to another project.
The following work days, which for my schedule is Monday, Wednesday, Friday, until the next Monday, I then began working on cataloguing the various POW artifacts. Each item was titled, given a short description of the item or items, and if needed I made sure to indicate if the artifact had some kind of damage or quirk that could end up damaging it. I would end up doing this twice. Once quickly, by hand, with short simple descriptions. And again on computer with longer more detailed descriptions. I did also make sure to double check the artifacts as I was inventorying them to make sure my descriptions were accurate. I had that all finished by the end of my day on the following Monday, the 15th.
Armament Internship 