Libby Baker Spring 2026 Museum Training Internship ePortfolio
Inter-institutional Communication:
The role of inter-institutional communications was significant in this semester’s internship. Outreaches were held with two separate institutions within Wyoming involving artifacts and exhibit processes: Wyoming State Museum and the Yellowstone County Museum.
Outreach to the Yellowstone County Museum began after a photographic copy of a battering ram affiliated with the Johnson County War had been discovered within collections. The goal of the communications with the museum was to discover if the Yellowstone County Museum housed the original image in their collections and to inquire as to whether or not we could use the photographic copy in the GLAM exhibit.
The communication with the Wyoming State Museum was most notable and continuous in the course of developing the GLAM exhibit. Elisabeth DeGrenier (supervisor of exhibit and programs) was the primary subject of continuous conversation that occurred near the end of the internship. I began outreach on behalf of the Western History Center, with oversight by Hanz Olson, to gain insight into how a larger institution, such as the Wyoming State Museum, integrates exhibits and public programming and interpretive approaches and layout designs for exhibits that feature sensitive topics like the Johnson County War.
Shortly after communications via email were had, Elisabeth, Hanz, and myself participated in a zoom meeting to further discuss Elisabeth’s role in the museum as well as covering her interpretive approach for exhibits before our visit to the State Museum.
Once remote communications had concluded, several members of the Western History Center, including myself, were able to visit Elisabeth in person to view the museum and visit with the collections team. A separate visit with the Wyoming State Archives also occurred during the visit to Cheyenne. We were fortunate enough to get the opportunity to view the collections and explore their process of digitization and collections management on behalf of the archives team.
Exhibit Planning and Collections as Data:
The internship for the spring semester of 2026 concentrated primarily on the GLAM exhibit following Wyoming frontier families and cattle networks, the Johnson County War, and James Thorton’s 1925 Wyoming Geological Field Book. The internship began with focus on familiarizing with the Charles Morrison anchored collection as well as documentation of the collection within the History Center’s collection database.
The collection consisted of twenty-one photographs that needed to be recorded in the Center’s digital collection. The process consisted of converting the images to a JPG file, listing the title and item identifier, and laying out a brief outline of the artifact; the description would need to be updated at a later point in time.
Once the items had been recorded in the digital collection, four images from the Morrison collection were selected to be used in the GLAM exhibit. The images selected were then placed in a word document and given a museum label to be framed and used in the exhibit. As the images had no description attached there was a use of Gemini to construct a museum label that outlined the contents of the image and followed the Smithsonian guidelines for exhibit development.
Further into the internship there was periodic use of the collection digitization tool ArchiveSpace to track and construct the collections for further and future use. Within the exhibit there were several collections used that required updates in ArchiveSpace: Winnie Bucknum Davis, Peter A. Demorest, and the Wyoming Geological Field Book.
Additionally, after visiting and touring the State Archives there were efforts made at the Western History Center to create separate spaces for accessions that would need to be recorded for updates to be made in the digital collections system. As a collections management intern, I was tasked with going through two boxed collections (Rachel Hunt and Michael Y. Herscht) to record file contents and location.
Collections as Data
Towards the end of the internship focus shifted to the creation of a digital timeline for the James Thorton Geological Fieldbook. The digital timeline would be used alongside the physical artifact as a method for audiences to further interact with the exhibit piece. A QR code was posted in the exhibit for viewers to scan and gain access to the digital timeline that showcases fourteen selected images from the fieldbook with attached descriptions and posted access to the History Center’s public collections page. The timeline was arranged in phases of Stratigraphic Alignment (Deep Time to Cretaceous) including spatial and geographical stops mentioned in the journal writings.
Personal Learning Style:
The very first task of this semester’s internship was to list my personal learning style according to David A. Kolb's Learning Styles survey. I had listed that my learning style consisted of a blend of assimilating learning and diverging learning; I do best under circumstances in which I can watch and observe a task before doing it myself as well as having clear and concise instructions and information presented to me before completing a task.
Having taken my learning style into account, Hanz was able to construct my internship around my response to the survey. Taking into consideration the digital timeline or my work with the digital collections databases (Omeka and Archive Space), instructions for the projects were clearly defined and listed and before I attempted each task I was shown how the process was to be completed. Once I had a direction and had been shown how to go about the task I was able to complete the projects efficiently.
After my time at the Western History Center came to a conclusion, I would say that my learning style also included aspects of converging learning accompanied with assimilating and diverging learning. After gaining more experience with the collections process I also have a preference for applying built knowledge to a technical project.