A peek behind the scenes at the Loretto Heritage Center

What is it like to work at a museum and archive? This week, the Loretto Heritage Center is giving a glimpse into what goes on behind the scenes by highlighting some of our recent projects on the Loretto Community’s Facebook feed.

The Heritage Center’s projects are done with several goals in mind: preserving the papers and artifacts that document Loretto’s 200-year history, sharing Loretto’s stories among the Community and to others and ensuring that anyone who is interested has access to the collections, stories and resources housed at the Heritage Center.

The work of the Heritage Center staff takes many forms. It often begins with inventorying and organizing historical materials so that we know what we have and where we can find it! We catalog materials that have been donated to us recently and answer a whole lot of research requests over phone or email. Occasionally we assist researchers who come visit us in person. We make sure that the archived papers and artifact collections are stored in ways that will preserve them for as long as possible. On the outreach side, we research and write blog posts, social media content, and exhibits, and we give tours for visitors to the Loretto Motherhouse.

The specific projects we have worked on this year focus on artifact preservation and increasing public access to the materials housed in the Heritage Center archives. Last summer, we updated storage for much of our textile collection. We are in the midst of projects to digitize all 12,000 photographs from Loretto schools and to digitize and transcribe ledger books from Loretto’s historic Kentucky academies. Finally, we are beginning work on a project to preserve and make more accessible the records of Loretto’s Indigenous boarding schools. Check out our posts on Loretto Community’s Facebook page this week for more details!

For additional content about Loretto’s history, check out the LOREtto Blog, the Heritage Center’s Facebook and Instagram accounts (@LorettoHeritage), and the Loretto Community Facebook page (@LorettoCommunity).