Reford Gardens/ Jardins de Métis is a Canadian National Historic Site located in Grand Métis, Quebec. The Reford Gardens/ Jardins de Métis team is committed to showcasing and preserving the history of the Lower Saint Lower region through a variety of activities, ranging from tours to digital exhibitions. This mission thereby aligns with my previous and current fields of study. Specifically, holding an MA in History of Medicine and beginning my second (and final) year as a Master of Information Studies candidate (with an emphasis on GLAM[1]) during the Fall 2021 semester, I am naturally invested in the preservation and promotion of history.
I opted to undertake this internship because I sought to apply the knowledge I had acquired in my courses to a cultural heritage project and, by extension, prepare for a future career as a heritage professional. My main responsibility as an intern at the Reford Gardens/ Jardins de Métis was producing descriptive metadata for a collection of 215 watercolors painted by artist and naturalist Anna Lois Dawson Harrington. During the Winter 2021 semester, I learned about conventions of description and metadata structure in GLIS 649 (Digital Curation) and GLIS 660 (Enterprise Content Management) respectively. By drawing on notes from these courses, in turn, I was able to create metadata (on an item and collection level) with high levels of granularity. The watercolors, which largely depict scenes from the Lower Saint Lawrence region, are in the process of being digitized and, alongside the corresponding metadata, will soon be accessible to the public in the form of a digital exhibition. I believe that the experience of creating metadata for a publicly accessible digital exhibition will enhance my understanding of upcoming course material, namely in GLIS 609 (Metadata and Access) and GLIS 633 (Digital Media).
The production of metadata for such an expansive collection was certainly daunting, but no less rewarding. I particularly enjoyed including contextual information within the metadata, which often involved combing through Anna Dawson’s correspondence for glimpses into her artistic process. For example, I was continuously able to match excerpts from her letters, where she described landscapes or scenes she intended to paint, with the completed watercolors. It was also a privilege to be able to speak with her great-granddaughter, Jill Harrington, who was able to provide additional insight into Anna’s life as a female artist in the late-nineteenth century. Another highlight of my internship was presenting my project progress, alongside my fellow interns, via Zoom to historians, heritage professionals, and members of the Lower Saint Lawrence community. It is my hope that my presentation has garnered interest in the upcoming digital exhibition.
The current circumstances and remote nature of this internship did result in some challenges. Access to archival material, for instance, was limited due to many archival institutions throughout Canada not being open to the public because of the pandemic. Thankfully, I reached out to an archivist at the McGill Archives, where the bulk of Anna Dawson’s correspondence is housed, and she organized multiple, virtual consultations wherein I viewed the individual letters, evaluated their relevance to the project, and placed scan requests. Furthermore, while my fellow interns and I were working on projects with overlapping themes, it was initially difficult to discern whether a resource I came across would be equally valuable to them (and vice versa) because we were in separate workspaces. In an effort to overcome this limitation, we organized regular Zoom meetings to discuss our project findings and share resources. These meetings had the added benefit of making the internship more engaging and boosting morale.
[1] GLAM is an acronym for Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums.
