After I received my undergraduate degree in History, I went to London, England, to find a job in a museum or historic site. By some miracle, I managed to land a position at the Tower of London. Sure, it was as a shop girl, but it was an experience that allowed me to find out what people wanted from a visit to a site (“Where can I find a good cup of coffee?”) as well as providing an in-depth view of what makes a positive visitor experience (among many things, having a good story to tell).
I took that knowledge and returned to Canada where I spent a summer as an interpreter at Fort Edmonton Park, where I sewed and cooked in a 1880s kitchen, demonstrating life from an earlier time. It was also that summer where I spoke to the volunteer coordinator at the Royal Alberta Museum, who listened to my interests in history, stories and documentation. She suggested I work in the Military History collection, where my first assignment was to fully catalogue a recent donation of World War II veteran’s trunk with his uniforms, letters and memorabilia. There I was hooked on registration, collections management and the importance of thorough cataloguing.
This lead me to graduate school in museum studies, where I wrote a thesis on ensuring museums document the donors’ stories when accessioning objects into their collections. I applied my schooling when I worked as an art museum registrar, a national historic site curator, an archivist, and when I helped smaller museums conduct inventories and advised them on policy and procedures for complete collections management. It is with this collections management experience that I started my dream job as senior registrar of the Royal BC Museum in January of 2015.
I took that knowledge and returned to Canada where I spent a summer as an interpreter at Fort Edmonton Park, where I sewed and cooked in a 1880s kitchen, demonstrating life from an earlier time. It was also that summer where I spoke to the volunteer coordinator at the Royal Alberta Museum, who listened to my interests in history, stories and documentation. She suggested I work in the Military History collection, where my first assignment was to fully catalogue a recent donation of World War II veteran’s trunk with his uniforms, letters and memorabilia. There I was hooked on registration, collections management and the importance of thorough cataloguing.
This lead me to graduate school in museum studies, where I wrote a thesis on ensuring museums document the donors’ stories when accessioning objects into their collections. I applied my schooling when I worked as an art museum registrar, a national historic site curator, an archivist, and when I helped smaller museums conduct inventories and advised them on policy and procedures for complete collections management. It is with this collections management experience that I started my dream job as senior registrar of the Royal BC Museum in January of 2015.