Jessica Bulger's main duty was to search for articles online and through JSTOR and other scholarly journals that dealt with Hampton in order to replace some articles stored in binders in the farmhouse. She had a difficult time finding many articles and therefore became very familiar with these journals. Later on, she was able to be a part of a couple of guided tours on which she was able to become more familiar with the building, the people who lived there, and their stories. She learned even more about the Ridgely family when she was assigned the job of proofreading the transcription of James McHenry Howard's memoirs entitled “Ridgely Family History” from 1894 about the family and the property, a document that was well over two hundred pages long handwritten.
She also was able to learn more about the interpretive aspect of a historic site. She learned the importance of keeping track of how many hours volunteers spend there as well as how many visitors come for tours each day. She was given the job of looking through digital photographs from various events held there in the past few years that will eventually be added to a slideshow on the TV in the visitors' hyphen in the mansion.
However, she learned the most from working with the cultural resources staff, especially since she decided during the internship that this was the direction she would like to go in her future career. I learned about the National Park Service's catalogue system by helping to take the blue catalogue papers into their corresponding binders. Whenever an item is added to the collection, it is entered into the system that the entire Park Service uses, and is given a catalogue number. Each year, these papers are printed out and are sent to each national park to place in the binders. Every time an item in the collection is moved to another location, it must be noted, and a new blue paper is sent to each location for the binder.
One of the most exciting days was when she learned how to properly clean furniture in the collection. She was taught how to dust off and vacuum the furniture before it goes into storage, as well as how to cover it with muslin. She became more familiar with the furniture in the collection when she was given the duty of searching through the photographs of the items in storage in the metal building in order to find the corresponding ones, which she then scanned into the computer, which will be printed out, laminated, and secured onto the covering muslin in order to easily tell what each item is along with its catalogue number. She was also taught how to prepare and care for an exhibit. She learned how to properly polish silver in preparation for a photo shoot the site was having of different pieces in the collection. The photographs will be put online as a part of a virtual tour of the mansion.
