This post is part of our Internship Spotlight series. For this installment, Museology Communications and Marketing Assistant Marcela Velandia (’25) spoke with Emily Shields (’25) about her internship experience at the National Nordic Museum.
What organization did you intern with and what did you do in your internship?
I interned with the National Nordic Museum (NNM) in their Collections department. My role was to assist with collection operations, primarily cataloging some accessions. This meant creating digital catalog records by numbering and describing an object as well as storing them and making sure any changes were reflected in the collection management system.
What learning goals did you have going into the internship?
This was a very fundamental internship for me–my goals were primarily skill-related, pertaining to the process of cataloging from start to finish. I took ownership of describing a group of hand-painted Danish ceramics. Getting to go through the whole process was advantageous in that it helped me build a range of skills, from photographing and recording metadata, to labeling using water-based adhesive and archival-grade substrate.
It was also important for me to gain experience using collection management software since that is something that you do not learn through coursework. It was great to have the experience of manually adding files as well as importing them in bulk. Through creating those records, I got to think more about classification systems and how collection professionals are keeping audiences and accessibility in mind. I was thinking, “How is someone going to be thinking about this object? What kind of prior knowledge are they going to have about it?” That tension between classifying more specifically for accuracy’s sake vs. classifying more broadly for accessibility was engaging to me.
What did you end up learning from your internship? Did you fulfill your original learning goals? Were there any unexpected takeaways or learning moments?
Being a curious person, I learned about some of the more abstract conversations within museums and at the Nordic specifically. I was thinking about the organization of departments and how they are structured or not structured to communicate interdepartmentally, and I learned about what I value in a workplace and considered how to assess that. The museum was going through a transition of new leadership, so I was thinking considerably about what the previous leader had accomplished and what type of candidate may fit the museum’s present needs. The Nordic also had a history of volunteering, given its community-based roots as the Nordic Heritage Museum, so I was thinking about the importance of collections policies and standardization in terms of succession planning and sustainability.
What’s next? How did this internship relate to your career goals, interests, and/or plans, and how has it impacted those goals, interests, and/or plans?
My career interest has long been collections management and registration. I took Hollye’s class [Preservation & Management of Collections] last autumn, so I was very excited to apply the skills that I learned in that course within my role at the Nordic Museum. I am still keen on working in collections, but I have a nascent interest in development and donor relations, and I’m hoping to explore that. I am also expanding my analytical skills and critical thinking through research. I will be involved with a research study through early next year, and I will be conducting a research thesis as well. Knowing a little about many concentrations within Museology is vital for us as emerging professionals.