AIMM, NARA, and the (eventual) end of the semester!

Posted on November 17, 2014 by Nicolette & Clinton Talley

Hello again, Bloggers!

Last update I left you with my essay from the SEMC Annual Meeting in Knoxville, TN. I turned in that essay, and hopefully it will be published in the SEMC newsletter that should be coming out in the near future. I’ll keep you updated!

On a different note, I wanted to push your attention towards something I’ve been doing for the past 6 months, but you may not be as familiar with unless I actually mention it. I am a regular blogger for the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum, where USS Razorback is currently docked on the North Little Rock side of the Arkansas river. I am a tour guide there, and one additional thing that I like to do is explore the history of the maritime industry through their “This Day in History” blog that they do weekly. Last month alone I did two blogs, one on the 150th anniversary of the sinking of CSS Albemarle and one on the first transit of a US Navy ship through the Panama Canal. Its a wonderful way to add to my tours, or to answer any additional questions. For instance, Razorback is named after a whale…the same whale that USS Finback is named after. Why is Finback important? Well, this is the submarine that picked up former President George H.W. Bush after his plane was shot down during a mission. Since I was the one to write about Finback, I now can add this to anyone curious about additional information on the naming of vessels, or about the lifeguard missions that submarines were sent on during World War II to rescue pilots from their downed planes. I encourage you to check out the blog, not only for my articles, but for the other people who contribute to the blog as well. Its a great way to learn more about nautical history!

Moving back to NARA and the Clinton Library, I have to say that the semester is slowly winding down to an end and I can’t believe that its almost over! Next week is Thanksgiving! After that, only two more weeks left of my GA. We’ve completed our fiscal year of 2014, and are starting the inventory process for the next year. A bunch of the same old stuff, but this time we are switching out the exhibits in order to clean our the cases and put new items out on display. Most of it is pretty much the same thing, since we have a lot of the same stuff, but all in all its a great way of learning how to restructure an entire exhibit. Everything is being changed, not just the items. For instance, the fabric that had been stapled around the walls of the exhibit needed to be replaced…much harder work than it sounds! I did find this really amazing “sculpture” of Buddy!

Lastly, I wanted to thank everyone for sticking with me this semester as I transitioned from the archive to the museum. Its been a wonderful journey, and I could not have done it without the amazing people around me! I’ll save the shout-outs for my last blog post this semester, but it has been a great year at the Clinton library. Its also been a relatively difficult semester. My three classes, (Introduction to Public History, Historical Methods, and Digital Archives of the 21st Century) were not to be taken lightly. Working fulltime as well really just means I need to have great time management! I have enjoyed being the Vice-President/Co-President of Phi Alpha Theta, as well as a member of the Graduate Student Council as the Public History Representative. All in all, its been a busy, (stressful!), but fun semester. Now that winter has started to creep in, I leave you with some lovely fall pictures I took as I brought my fiance, Clinton, and our dog, Kyzer, around the Clinton library property one day.