This was a short week at the internship since I am now working three days at the Archives (my normal job where I get paid) and three days at NMAI. The reason being is they decided not to give me enough to live without pay for three months. Although it's kind of a let that I don't get as much time to work on the ledger project. Hopefully things will work out. Also I was completely on my own this week, as Kara went on a two week vacation but I have managed so far. She is going to have a laundry list of questions when she gets back!
Onward to Wednesday 6/27...
I started out the day by adding new sites to some of the records I had entered last week. The locality section of the ledger tells me where certain specimens were found or excavated and I have to put that information into the "Sites" section of the record. All of the sites are created by one person: the supreme site creator, now on known as Pat the Site Master. She is one of the Collections Manager at the CRC. Apparently, she knows everything about sites. Sometimes the location in the ledger has not been created in the database and I have to send her an e-mail to create that site. I also added the completed records into a group for easy access.
Since I had 50 new records created by the record maker (Heather, the record maker), I continued on my way deciphering old hand writing/spelling and entering the ledger information into the database. Some of the information is very tricky to figure out. Thanks to my amazing deduction skills, I've been doing fairly well so far. Found out that the Cibunez tribe, as it is spelled in the ledger, is actually the Ciboney tribe. They hail from the Caribbean. Eventually I did run out of records. I contacted the record maker to make more but she was in training. So I had to start on those pesky measurements again!
Thursday 6/28
Just when I thought all of the kinks were worked out. The record maker had to send in a curve ball. I tried to explain to her why I needed so many more records to be made but apparently she didn't understand the situation. Simply put I need more records when I have completed the ones I can and eventually go back to the ones that I am suppose to skip for now. This is sort of my job. Well no deal on that table and she was giving me a fuss. So I went to Ann the Curator, told her the situation, and she sorted the problem out. Now I get records in batches of 100 when requested!
I find some of the bone descriptions quite hysterical sometimes when I read them. Cranium - dirty yellowish, brownish...I'm trying to picture this color but all I get is weird poop brown images in my head. Next it will mention some parts of the face or skull that is "defective", broken, or gone. Even if half the skull was gone it will still be described as "in somewhat good condition" or "fairly well preserved." Not really sure what this information was used for because the descriptions are clearly subjective.
A new place I learned about is Jauco, Cuba, a small coastal village. New tribe names: Neutrals and Kwakiutl in Canada, Conestogans in Pennsylvania, and Taino-Arawak in the Caribbean.
Lastly, there was a potluck at the CRC on Thursday for someone who was leaving. That means free food! Someone had brought in a huge crock pot full of chili, which was amazing!
Friday 6/29
Continued entering ledger information into EMu. I was able to get to record #125 today! Most of the specimens I entered today were from the collection of Dr. Joseph L. Jones, a renowned physician from Louisiana. Also ran into other GWU interns at the Museum Support Center cafeteria at lunch today!
Next week, I look forward to going to the Folklife Festival and 4th of July festivities. Hopefully more pictures!
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