Roman Society Internship Report
In August 2011 I undertook a week long internship at the Great North Museum in
Newcastle thanks to a generous bursary from The Roman Society. The internship was an
excellent way of getting a behind the scenes look at how a museum works and especially
everything that is involved in keeping a museum up to date with today’s audiences and catering
to their interests. The internship gave me the opportunity to work for a highly lauded museum
and to gain valuable practical experience which is hard to come by in today’s job-market. As a
M.A. student in the Visual and Material Culture of Ancient Rome, seeing the practical
applications of research was highly beneficial and helped me gain valuable experience as how
Classics can be brought to a wider audience. The Keeper of Archaeology, Andrew Parkin,
welcomed me to the museum and guaranteed a highly informative and constructive week.
Today’s museum visitor is no longer contented with just the object in a case but seeks an
interactive experience with the item displayed. Therefore, my main task during my internship
was the creation of QR codes for the permanent Hadrian ’s Wall exhibition. A QR, or Quick
Response, code is a specific matrix barcode which can be read by smartphones. Information such
as URLs, texts or other data can be encoded in these barcodes, giving a visitor to the museum
more information than that which is able to be put on the display cards. QR codes are now
widely used in retail and are starting to also be used in other sectors. By creating these codes, I
believe I was able to contribute to the museum. I, furthermore, created a guide for the usage of
QR-codes so that the museum would quickly be able to pick up on what I had learned that week.
I also did some research on the Corbridge Lion, a sculpture of a lion which was found at one of
the forts on Hadrian’s Wall. A copy of this statue will be exhibited at the University of
Newcastle and the information I provided will be used to inform viewers about its history and
meaning. The work played to my strengths as a researcher and showed me how the key skills
which I have acquired during my university career can be applied in a practical setting.
The work I did for the Great North Museum has given me valuable skills as to the
creation of these codes which I feel I can apply in a great many jobs and future applications. I
learnt how to read these codes and also how to create them as well as provide the texts which
will be encoded. I wish to thank the Great North Museum and The Roman Society for this
unique and amazing experience.
Ghislaine van der Ploeg