Tag Archives: American Truck Historical Society

Same Project, Different Day

By Caitlin Eckard

Like Whitney said, things at ATHS are fairly the same day to day. I have been working on incorporating their photo catalog into PastPerfect, which is what I do pretty much every day I am there. I thought this work would be very boring and tedious, but I actually really enjoy it. It makes the day go by much faster, and I am learning a lot about how to categorize certain photos. I have only made it to page 21 of the first binder, and there are four more binders full of photo details that I will hopefully get to some day. It seems as though my work is unending, but my superiors tell me I am doing a great job, so that is promising.

I did receive some exciting news a couple weeks ago. ATHS has offered me a part time job through the summer and possible through December. I will be digitizing and uploading the aforementioned photos to the catalog. I am quite excited about this new prospect, because it will be excellent work experience, and I will be pretty much working on my own, which is nice too. I am also going to help volunteer at their annual convention which is in Springfield, Missouri this year. It is the last week of May, and I will be helping with merchandise sales. I haven’t really done anything like this before, and hopefully it will be interesting to see how they raise money for their organization. I also hope to learn a thing or two about trucks and trucking!

OMG- Magazines!

By Whitney Knowles

The last couple times working at the American Historical Truck Society has been filled with colorful pictures of trucks, truck parts and the people who enjoy them. We have been shuffling through old black and white pictures to organize them by their original serial number. Their collection was disorganized and needed to be fixed. It was cool to see how far trucks have come and the different styles that they would come up with. For example, the 50’s and 60’s trucks looked very “George Jesttson” type of style. They looked more like airplanes and spaceships than trucks and buses that we have come to know. My favorite was the monster truck photos from the 70’s. That was on bad mother on wheels. 1779677_744897012189173_1444640811_n

The next week I got to go through ALL their magazines. It is crazy that they have some from 1936. Most of the copies were from the 1970’s and 1980’s. It was my job to sort them by year and month, which took most of the day to complete. I would flip through some, since it gets boring at times, and found it interesting how the truck world was reacting to the change in technology. They seemed to think it would make their jobs hard when in fact it made it much easier.

funny how times change so fast!

Paid Summer Internships at the American Truck Historical Society

Position Description: Collections Intern
This summer, the American Truck Historical Society is looking for at least two to four interns to assist in the digitization and cataloging of the White Motor Photo Collection. As necessary, the Collections Intern will support ATHS with other collection management projects.

 

Position Responsibilities:

  • Enter accession and donor information for objects in the collection not already entered into the museum’s collections management software PastPerfect
  • Update old records already in PastPerfect
  • Correlate all items with correct paper and database files. If these files do not already exist, create said file
  • Ensure all objects are properly marked with old and new accession numbers
  • Digitally photograph or scan each object and add images to PastPerfect

Position Details:
Duration/Hours: 12 weeks; approximately 25 hours per week
Pay: $8.00/hr
Start Date: June 2nd, 2014 (flexible)

Position Requirements:
Intended graduation with a focus in Museum Studies, History, or related field; strong attention to detail; excellent written and oral communication skills; and ability to work well alone and in a group.

Application Deadline: April 15th, 2014. Final selection will be made by April 30th

Interested students should reach out to Courtney Dery (courtney@aths.org), ATHS Library Director, for more information. Graduate students are preferred, but qualified undergraduates will be considered. Students interested in applying should follow the instructions on the How to Apply page. Applications will be received until the positions are filled.

Photos, Photos, Photos

While this is my first post, I’ve been at the American Truck Historical Society (ATHS) for some time now. And my work has been quite eye opening so far…

The first day there, I was given the opportunity to sit in on a board meeting. ATHS is large, so they have board members from across the U.S. Each member can then join a committee of their choosing. (Archival, fundraising, etc.) It was nice to see how other museum entities functioned with their boards. ATHS is quite different though because the majority of their board are or were truckers, so sometimes it can be a challenge with conflicting ideas based on personal interest and professional need.

My main project so far has been helping to organize the ATHS’s White Photo Collection. The White family began the ATHS, so the majority of the photos were passed on from them. This task seems so large, but I really enjoy the work of organizing and making sense of the collection. There are about 130,000 photos in this particular collection, and it is the largest collection the ATHS possesses. Ultimately, the idea is to digitize the collection so members can search an online database for the pictures. Also, most of the pictures are in stage one degradation (vinegar smells!), so organization and storage needs to happen rather quickly.

In the board meeting I participated in the members were discussing digitizing the collection and then possibly destroying the collection in an effort to save time and money for future storage facilities. To me this seems horrible, but I guess if you don’t have the money? What do you fellow interns think?

 

 

Trucking a Path

by Whitney Knowles

I soon start my internship with the American Truck Historical  Society, which seems overwhelming. Being a senior History major with a minor in Classics at UMKC, time seems to be something that I am lacking. I have to finish my senior project, come up with lesson plans for Supplemental Instruction and my own classes. By adding this internship, I am hoping to gain the skills to slowly climb the ladder in experience in the real world of History.

The American Truck Historical Society (or ATHS for short) is a small building with tons of information on both trucks and Semi-trucks. Not being from a “trucking” background I was worried that I would stick out like a sour grape, but meeting the crew at ATHS made me feel better about my lack of trucking history. It seemed to break the ice when I told them the closest connection I had to trucking was that my birthday is 10/4/good buddy, which mean in trucker speak, “all good”. That got them all laughing and sharing their own stories or trucker related tales.

The little ATHS building is going through a face lift at the moment since they have been reorganizing the system from the ground up. We are having a series of meeting with fellow ATHS broad members to figure out how to process the collections and share them with the public. I think that it will be very productive semester! I will report back on the new things to come!!

That’s all for now!!

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