Week 7

      When I went to the museum on Saturday, February, 17, the majority of the staff was very busy because the museum was setting up a new monument for the United States Coast Guard. The Coast Guard was founded in August 4, 1790. In honor of the Coast Guard, and its founder, Alexander Hamilton, the Miami-Dade Military Museum dedicated a memorial to the men and women of the United States Coast Guard. While the memorial was being set up, I was tasked with adding bricks to the path that is going to be completed around the museum. Once the monument was finished, I had to help a visitor locate one of our staff members who is in charge of artifacts and primary sources. The visitor wanted to donate a military medal ribbon bar to the museum. After this, I needed to transfer photos from the Coast Guard monument display into the museum’s social media Facebook page. Normally, whenever the museum showcases an important event, they share information and pictures of the event on social media. After this, I needed to help the museum set up additional pictures in front of the elevator. Once we hung the pictures, and made sure that they were leveled, I had to clean a display case. Some of the display cases at the museum have backgrounds and pictures taped to the back of the case, so I had to clean some of the tape residue off the display case.

    The museum was preparing to set up a military exhibition display at Florida International University, so I needed to transfer the exhibit materials from the museum into the transport vehicle. After this, I had to help the museum organize emails and photographs in order to document the museum's air conditioning unit. The museum has been having air conditioning issues for the past three years. The museum staff member that oversees the maintenance of the museum had taken many pictures of the air conditioner and it’s repairs over the past couple of years. I needed to transfer over 50 pictures of the air conditioning unit into a Google docs file so that my supervisor could have easy access to the photos. I also needed to make separate Google docs files so that the museum will be able to view future emails from the air conditioning installation company. The museum wants all the documents and pictures organized so we can determine why the air conditioner is still not functioning correctly. Once I transferred and downloaded the photos into Google docs, I also needed to place the files on a flash drive. When I downloaded the files, they were downloaded as “zip files.” In order to make the files accessible, I had to extract the files so they would not be “zip files.”

     Following this, I received a phone call from a local high school because they wanted to donate supplies to a local veterans' facility in Miami. Once I recorded the individual's name and phone number, I transferred him to one of the staff members who works closely with donation supplies for homeless veterans.

    On Friday, I fixed my supervisor's email on his iPad, because he was not receiving emails. After this, the museum received several visitors and we provided multiple tours. We had visitors from Latvia on Thursday, and we had visitors from Argentina on Friday. I gave a quick tour of half of the museum to a visitor that served in the United States Marine Corps. He served in between the wars of Korea and Vietnam. He had to leave early, however, he was very impressed with the museum and wanted to come back. This week was a productive week for the museum and I hope the next week receives more visitors.