By Justine Lyn
Photo by Taylor Ann Wright on Unsplash
As someone who has worked in museums since 2017, I have a strong sense of pride for museum work, but I’ll be honest, some people think it’s boring. My job consists of sitting in front of my computer for hours, surrounded by books, and typing away for 7 hours straight. However, just as I am about to agree that my job is useless and boring, I remember the 3 reasons I love my job: preserving history, my inquisitive mind and my duty as a gatekeeper of knowledge.
Preserving History:
Firstly, when I research an obscure company or aspect in history, I begin to feel connected to those people and their stories. When I give tours of historic houses, the most common thing visitors say to me is, “I can tell how passionate you are and how much you love this house and its stories”. Is that not what we all hope for when we are gone? To be remembered and honoured. In my small way, I believe that by sitting in front of a computer researching and entering data, I am remembering and honouring those who came before me. It’s not always an easy job, it is tiring and tedious sometimes, but somebody has to do it, lest the stories and lives of those who can no longer speak be lost forever.
Inquisitive Minds:
Secondly, as a University of Toronto student, my professors have instilled in me a thirst for knowledge. I see knowledge as a steppingstone to new adventures. Think of a video game where you acquire new tools and unlock new abilities to advance to the new level. Similarly, I must learn new things to unlock a new-found sense of enrichment in my life. I think of it as a game: Can I find an obscure footnote about a specific person? Can I find the company history of a business that has been closed for a hundred years? Can I find new stories to tell the public? How can I make history exciting? These are all questions that I consider on a regular basis. Personally, I take a lot of pride in my work and it makes me feel accomplished when I learn new things. I am just lucky enough that my job utilizes my inquisitiveness as a tool to unlock new levels of professional accomplishment and satisfaction.
Gatekeepers of Knowledge:
Thirdly, my supervisors are tasking me to complete records on our museum database with the goal of being able to provide the best and most accurate information for our online databases, tours, programs and exhibitions. As such, we are the gatekeepers of our collections and the knowledge they hold, but our job is not to keep all this knowledge for ourselves, it is to share it with others. One of my favorite comments that I get from visitors is, “You have given me a newfound interest in history”. All we really want is to have people discover, love and appreciate history as much as we do; and amazingly, museum workers have the power to give the public the tools to do so.
So when people accuse me of having a boring job, I tell them that although my job doesn’t require (or recommend) that I jump through hoops of fire and explode things, it is an exciting job that millions of museum workers around the globe absolutely adore. Not only that, but my job is fulfilling and an essential part of our living history and culture.
If you are interest in becoming a museum professsional too, click either of these two links: https://flemingcollege.ca/programs/museum-management-and-curatorship or https://ischool.utoronto.ca/areas-of-study/master-of-museum-studies/
If you want to see museum workers getting down and funky, click here: https://www.whenyouworkatamuseum.com/