Author: Sydney McGahey
Sydney McGahey, Museum Studies Intern at the Salk Collection - Spring 2024
Going into this internship, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Pitt’s Public Health graduate program graciously donated half of everything from the laboratory of Jonas Salk, a Pittsburgh doctor who invented the Polio vaccine, the other half going to UC San Diego, and none of the items had been touched. Despite being only half of everything from the Salk lab and seemingly not an intricate combination of items, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my initial expectations were completely wrong.
About a year ago, some of the items from this collection were photographed and a handful were placed out in the lobby of the Pitt Public Health Building, leaving the remaining items to be sorted by the next lucky intern. The number of items in this collection was mind-boggling at first, as boxes upon boxes filled three large back rooms in the building and were stacked in somewhat precarious positions. In addition to the infinite number of boxes, several metal file cabinets and large industrial freezers were dropped off, with hundreds of copies of Salk’s publications stacked on top. This large number of items to be sorted through and recorded was intimidating at first, but it made me all the more excited to dig in as I had my work cut out for me: cataloging and archiving. Essentially, my job is to sort through every single box and record everything I can out about the contents into a spreadsheet, then carefully repackage the items. This internship proved to be an equal mix of labor and computer work, as I was constantly utilizing spreadsheets and moving heavy boxes.
The Salk collection was split into three basic sections: prints, glassware, and miscellaneous. I began by tackling all of the prints, which took a bit longer than I had anticipated. The boxes that these prints were in were labeled, although most of the time the contents did not actually match the label. Organizing these into order of publication was quite the mess, as it turned into a treasure hunt to find the next print or the other hundred copies hiding in various boxes. This portion of the collection was fairly easy to catalog, other than it just being a bit time-consuming.
The glassware and miscellaneous portions of the collection is where things become much more gray. I had initially thought that the contents of the boxes would be more separated, but it was quite the common occurrence that I found glass with random other objects, including metal. This portion of the collection proved to be a bigger challenge for me, as nothing is labeled and I’m not familiar with 98% of the contents in the boxes. Going through all of the items taught me to be patient and cautious, as most of the items are quite fragile and were packaged poorly. Also, not being familiar with a lot of the content slowed my process down quite a bit as I was forced to learn what things were in order to correctly record them. Along the way, Google’s image search became my best friend and was quite helpful in giving me clues on what items might be, or even what brand they were.
With the enormity of this collection, I don’t think that I will have time to finish before the semester is up, and that’s okay. I am happy that this collection kept me busy and gave me experience that I would never have expected to enjoy as much as I did.