College at Brockport Collaboration

by Danielle Maerlender

The Emily L. Knapp Museum and Library of Local History is honored to work in collaboration with Museum Internship students in the Anthropology Department at the College at Brockport. In recent years, the two have been working together through hands-on experience-based learning. Students have selected independent, semester-long projects focusing on a professional field of museum work, a few of which include collections management, cataloguing, conservation, research, curation, education, visitor studies, and marketing. With guidance and instruction from the Knapp Museum Board and course instructor, students are researching the rich collection of local Brockport material culture housed in the Knapp Museum. Not only do the students engage in hands-on projects that provide significant services to the Emily Knapp Museum, they gain knowledge, skills, abilities and experience in a field that will further prepare them for future career opportunities and raise interest in the museum’s collection.

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In the Fall of 2015, a new group of Museum Internship students from the Anthropology Department, under the instruction of Dr. Christine Zinni, have begun projects on various subjects. At least once a week, museum interns spend an hour or so in the museum examining artifacts, interacting with board members, and studying museum documents to uncover information on Brockport’s past. In addition to working during museum open hours, the Emily Knapp Board has been opening after museum hours for internship students to further their research in an independent, interactive and research-oriented setting, which can be seen in the photo above.Some of the projects that students are undertaking this semester include:

• Research on World War I uniforms by Michael Lane
• Research on the Old Fellows’ ‘In Memoriam’ stone plaques by John Howard
• Research on hair wreaths by Jacqueline Baker
• Research on Native American artifacts by Greg Reynolds
• Research on the use of bibles during the nineteenth century by Dennis Paone
• Display of children’s toys at the Seymour Library by Azzaria Davis
• Guided Day of the Dead tour through the High Street Cemetery by Emily Fleming and Katie Nguyen
• Media communication on the collaboration between the Emily L. Knapp Museum and the College at Brockport, State University of New York by Danielle Maerlender

Some of these interns will also take on side-projects, creating displays that will be showcased in the museum and accompanied by plaques indicating which objects the intern researched and some interesting information the intern uncovered about the artifacts. Another intern will have additional plaques made for each of the museum’s rooms in order to make the museum more navigable and organized.