CHAWTON HOUSE Srutokirti Basak, Mansfield College, BA History, Second Year Undergraduate, In-person internship Work Projects I worked as a Curatorial and Collections Intern at Chawton House for a month. The work involved assisting the Collections and Curatorial Manager with the day-to-day management of an internationally significant collection of books & manuscripts, artworks, and household objects, cataloguing the personal library & papers of Austen scholar Deirdre Le Faye, and curating a display titled Ladies of Leisure: Outdoor Entertainment in Eighteenth Century England. Emma, my manager, was enormously supportive and encouraging despite how busy she was, and I really enjoyed working with her. She was also really willing to help with networking as well as answer any questions to do with collections handling, finding jobs in Arts and Heritage, as well as editing our curatorial work. Daily Life I was living in Winchester for the duration of my internship, and this was a really nice place to stay. It has lots of things to do but isn't very busy. There was another intern, and we stayed together in the same accommodation and she drove us into and back from work (at Chawton) every day. We would work from 10-5 on various things that Emma wanted us to do from cataloguing to book handling or closing the reading rooms for the day. After work, we sometimes went on walks in and around Winchester. Over the weekends, I saw friends from college as London was only an hour away. Overall, I really enjoyed my month at the internship. Lasting Impressions I loved my internship and especially enjoyed having the chance to work with my manager. Emma was so encouraging, helpful, and enthusiastic about my interest in heritage and working with her was one of the best parts of the internship. I also learned so much from her as well as volunteers at the house about book handling and care, such as learning to use
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