New Discoveries at the PHC!

Hello All! This is Week #2 of my jnternship at the Sanford Public History Center in the archives. This week was a bit exciting because we made some discoveries! The first discovery was a bunch of old light switches dating back to 1916, back when then electricity was first put into the building. Although painted over and the electrician who was putting in the new fixtures didn't treat it like a historical object, you can still see that parts of it are brass, porcelain, and the buttons had a mother of pearl overlay. My job will be to look up more information on these fixtures and the company that made them. Exciting! I get to research instead of dusting and inventorying - very important work, but tedious after a few hours. The second big discovery was made by yours truly! Today I had a terrible headache, and was trying to looking to see what work I had in my future instead of doing work in the present and while looking through drawers I found some old photos! Well, they aren't quite photos. I don't know much about them, and while Dave who works (Interns?) there gave me an explanation, as did Shirley (Intern), it went over my head. They are these old glass plated "photos". Maybe negatives. They go into this big camera that Dave called a "Brownie". And they project onto a screen? I'm not sure what happens after you place the glass negative into the slot. But I found inside of a card catalogue at least 50 of these! I'm going to push to make them a priority if possible, because if they aren't taken care of, the picture can be distorted. And being left in a cupboard basically since 1984 is not taking care of them well. Speaking of card catalogues, any of my readers old enough to remember them? I was around 7-10 years old when my local library went over to computers. I know how to use them, but barely remember actually having to! Last of my exciting news about this week - I made my own lunch! That may seem very normal to others, but I felt very accomplished making my own sandwich instead of buying one from subway. My plan for next week is to either pre-make a casserole or a soup for lunch and microwave it. I know that this blog is supposed to be about my internship, but I feel that it is also about me finding my way in life - my calling for my professional career and way to becoming an adult. Making lunch is my way of showing that this internship is changing me for the better, even if so far in a small way - making lunch. Till next week everybody!