Hello! My name is Taylor and I’m currently a summer student at the Old Log Church Museum this season. I am a born and raised Yukoner who attends post secondary at Mount Royal University as an English Major. This is my second year at the Old Log Church Museum and this summer, my job as a Heritage Interpreter is very different than when we were open to visitors.
One role this summer that hasn’t changed for me is running the OLCM’s social media. I run the Twitter, Facebook and update the Blog on our website, where you are so graciously reading about me and my job. I find Twitter to be the most frustrating and challenging. It uniquely has a character’s cap which serves to make each post uniform. It can however, be very interesting and entertaining to figure out which words convey my goal with the least amount of characters possible. The English language lends very easily this.
What I primarily do, with the social media of the museum, is find interesting artefacts in our database, pull them from temperature controlled storage, snap a photo and put that information into a spreadsheet for the post ideas to be approved by our Executive Director. The museum uses an outside site in order to schedule posts. This way the museum can have multiple weeks of posts ready without having to invest a lot of time weekly to the project.
This summer, the other half of my job consists of artefact research and looking through the database. There are around five thousand artefacts and archival items at the museum and part of my job is to comb through the database and find interesting items to talk about. I’ve found that photos are some of my favourites to go through because, while it is a snapshot in time, there is an artistic quality to each and every photo that tells an in-depth story, not only about the subjects in the photos but the photographer themselves. The photographer has actively chosen to capture that moment and it’s interesting to figure out why.
This job has exceeded my wildest expectations and I hope to work here until I am finished with my Undergrad. After my Undergrad I aspire to go into a Master’s program for Museum Studies as this job has given me the opportunity to strive to work in museums for the rest of my life.
