Service Learning Update: Oregon Area Historical Society

This summer, the Material Culture Program at UW-Madison is sponsoring five undergraduate students at local historical societies and museums in the Madison area. The Summer Service Learners gain real-world work experience and put the skills they've learned in the classroom to practical use, and the host organizations receive help with projects they may not otherwise have the time, staff, or other resources to complete. In this post, Laura Sevelis shares what she's accomplished so far with the Oregon Area Historical Society in Oregon, Wisconsin.

As a summer service learner with the Material Culture program, I have been interning at the Oregon Area Historical Society (OAHS). I have spent most of my time working through their extensive textile collection, cataloging, assessing, and repacking each piece using the knowledge I gained during a recent internship at UW-Madison’s Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection.  Every day I work at the museum I look forward to going through a new box or clothing rack as its contents are always a surprise. I have seen everything from WWI and II military uniforms, beaded evening gowns, homespun quilts, wedding dresses, Boy Scout uniforms, infant christening gowns, silk scarves and pearl collars.

A display of women’s dresses and accessories in the OAHS Museum.

So far I’ve mostly been consolidating and inventorying the collection, but we’ve just received permission to purchase archival materials to properly store the pieces, so the next part of my project will be moving each piece from their less-than-ideal homes in cardboard boxes and plastic storage containers into uniform, clearly labeled boxes lined with tissue paper. I also hope to find the time to photograph at least part of the collection so that information can be added into the database and/or their website. By the end of the summer I will also have written up a brief handbook pertaining to the standards for the future care of the textiles.

A box of baby clothing and accessories. 

While at OAHS, I have also worked on other aspects of their collection, such as continuing their cataloging project of adding the past fifteen years worth of catalog cards on to their PastPerfect database so the museum staff can better monitor their collections, in addition to introducing patrons to the museum and helping them with research during its open hours, developing a database of local businesses since the town’s foundation, and the more practical, less glamorous job of cleaning the facility.

I think the most important idea that I have garnered from this experience is that local history matters. This may seem blindingly obvious to everyone else, but within my experience and education history has only been the monumental, big picture events and people - Christopher Columbus, the Battle of Lexington, Charles Darwin, Black Tuesday, the Battle of the Bulge - and I have failed to recognize the deep, interesting history in small communities like in Oregon and my own hometown. I have appreciated the stories I’ve heard while at OAHS, whether it was from veterans discussing their hardships, alumni searching through class photos to find their own face and talking about the “old days,” and people searching and pointing to their family’s prior homestead on plat maps. This internship has not only opened my eyes to the various tasks involved in a museum career, which I plan on pursuing, but also the rich history that each community, no matter how small, possesses.  

--Laura Sevelis