Research visit to the Library of Michigan

This morning I visited the Library of Michigan with Christina, Brandon and Amanda from class. We dug through a bunch of old newspaper articles trying to find out about General Motors' role in the construction of I-496 and how the highway might have affected their business and employees afterward. Suprisingly, we uncovered a lot of stories and information that the other groups were working on and we felt that instead of just skipping over it and letting them know we found information, we decided to read through those as well and make notes. We were able to find a few pictures, which I will be posting for our class, one of which is above. This is a picture from The State Journal and shows men putting up a new sign for I-496 which is interestingly enough nicknamed Olds Freeway after R.E. Olds. I found this very interesting because I was investigating the role of the automotive industry on the construction of I-496 and the freeway is nicknamed after the man who ran the industry, so to speak, in Lansing.

Overall I found it to be a very interesting and productive visit. I had never been to the Library of Michigan and being able to sit and dig through old newspapers from the 1950's - 1980's was incredibly interesting.

Visit to the Michigan Historical Museum

I recently visited the Michigan Historical Museum with my class and went on a tour of the museum exhibits and got a behind the scenes look at some of the things that go into creating an exhibit. I had never been into the actual musem exhibits and found it quite interesting to be able to walk through with Maria Quinlan Leiby and hear about what went into creating the exhibits. I would love to go back and take my time through the exhibits.

I felt that being able to talk with some of the people who help to design and construct the exhibits helped me to get a much better idea of what all goes into the process. We are working on creating a plan for an exhibit centered around the contruction of I-496 through Lansing and it has been hard for me to visualize and know what needs to be thought about because I have not had any museum studies courses or done any type of work involving museum exhibits in the past. So for me, this was a great learning experience from that perspective.

From the perspective of our project in class itself, I am not sure yet how effective the tour was in our focusing our project. We discussed the controversies that arrived in creating some of the exhibits, for example the 1960's exhibit, which may help our group in deciding what approach to take and what to be aware of.

After visiting the website for the Michigan Historical Museum I found an interesting brochure for Michigan Teacher's which shows many of the acitivities and lessons and places around Michigan that the Historical Museum contributes.