At the Wende Museum, I worked under the Director of Collections and the Collections Manager, where I was trained in professional object handling, cataloging in Mimsy XG, and applying controlled vocabularies to create consistent and reliable metadata records. Working with both two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects — from fragile paper-based materials to larger, complex objects — gave me a strong foundation in collections documentation and the care 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, 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 covering file naming, processing, and storage, designed to support long-term access and future use. The full run is now live — you can browse the entire USSR in Construction collection on the Wende's online collection.

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 continue this work as a Digital Collections Specialist contractor at the Wende, photographing objects for our digital collection across a wide range of two-dimensional and three-dimensional materials. My focus is on creating accurate, sustainable, and care-driven digital surrogates that support research, access, and long-term stewardship that makes collections easier for people to engage with and use.