At the Wende Museum, I worked under the Director of Collections and the Collections Associate, where I was trained in professional object handling, cataloging in MIMSY, and applying controlled vocabularies to create consistent and reliable metadata records. I worked with both two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects (from fragile paper-based materials to larger, more complex objects), which gave me a strong foundation in collections documentation and the care and handling of sensitive, oversized, and often at-risk materials.

While working with the museum’s records, I identified an opportunity to expand access to the USSR in Construction magazine collection, an iconic Cold War–era propaganda series. Drawing on my background in photography (and my habit of diving all in once I realize something could be made more accessible), I initiated and led a project to digitize the collection in full, photographing each issue page by page. I set up a professional photography station and developed a repeatable digitization workflow (i.e. file naming, processing, storage) designed to support long-term access and future use. You can peruse more available issues on the Wende Online Collection. Here are a few personal favorites:

• USSR in Construction No. 3, 1938

• USSR in Construction No. 1, 1933

• USSR in Construction No. 3, 1934

• Soviet Dembel Album

Working with fragile and oversized materials meant constantly adapting technical workflows to a cultural heritage context and learning how to balance efficiency with care at every stage of digitization. It also directly shaped my Digital Humanities capstone, where I extended this work by analyzing metadata patterns and visual propaganda using computational methods.

I now work as a Museum Collections Photographer and Digitization Specialist contractor, photographing objects for our digital collection across a wide range of two-dimensional and three-dimensional materials. My work focuses on creating accurate, sustainable, and care-driven digital surrogates that support research, access, and long-term stewardship, and that make collections easier for people to engage with and use (with a lot of attention to detail, lighting, and the inevitable “just one more small adjustment”).