Week 10: Final week

Wednesday 8/8
In the morning, I checked sites that I had sent to Pat the site Master last Friday. I only had to change one of the sites since I have been getting fairly good at finding sites with very little information. Many of the specimens I entered into the database were donated from New York historical society members. Most of the donors were not in the database so I had to create a simple parties records in order to associate them with the specimens. There were also two odd entries in the ledger. One was a plaster caster of a Neanderthal skull, which I thought was odd and did not fit with the rest of the non-paleolithic specimens in the ledger. The other was a plaster cast skull of remains from Bolivia. Also odd but less so than the Neanderthal skull. I completed about 30 records for the day.
At the end of the day, there was a small party at the CRC for the last week of the summer interns. We had cake and ice cream, which was delicious.

Thursday 8/9
On Thursday, I completed about 33 records. I also finished entering the regular, organized part of the ledger, which went up to number 717. My supervisors also took me and another intern in Collections Information out to lunch at IHOP as an appreciation for all of our hard work. I finished up the afternoon by going through the entered ledger records for editing.

Friday 8/10
On Friday, I put together all of my notes and documentation, a bone guide for the bone type abbreviations, and updated instructions for the ledger. I sent them to my supervisor so that she would have the information for future reference and for who ever else will be working on it after me.
I also started and finished the unorganized portion of the ledger. I called numbers 718 to 913 the "scribble pages." These pages it were an organized mess of writing on pieces of paper, which noted newer and/or possible acquisitions to the physical anthropology collection between the years of 1920-1930. These specimens were described in depth as the other part of ledger. Also most were from the same place and locality or missing due to unreceived specimens. For those reasons and a little help from the "ditto" function of Emu, I was able to get through the last section fairly quickly.

Well, this concludes my time as an intern at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time working at the museum, experiencing museum life and events, and meeting a variety of people from all over the United States and even some from other countries such as the United Kingdom. I have also gained valuable experience working in Collections Information and getting to know how to use the KE-EMu collections database system in a large museum.