At the start of her last week with the World Rugby Museum, we put some questions to our intern Younji from South Korea. She has been with us for an 8 week placement as part of her postgraduate Museum Studies course at the University of Leicester.
Rugby is not as popular in South Korea as it is in the UK so it was very unfamiliar to me before moving here to study. However, I used to live near to Welford Road Stadium in Leicester, passing the stadium every day to go to university. This sparked my interest in rugby and I thought having a summer work placement at the World Rugby Museum would be a great opportunity to get to know about the sport deeply. I hope rugby can become more popular in Korea, and hopefully one day I can contribute to the rugby museum in the country as well. I also wanted to learn about collection management skills for photography collections and understand the museums' contemporary collecting practice.
My main responsibility is documenting photographs from the BBC archive that was recently donated to the museum. I have been trained on the Vernon Collection Management System. I catalogue the photographs by giving each one an accession number then producing an object record on Vernon. This can involve research about the person in the photograph.
I like the working environment here at the museum. The World Rugby Museum has a small team and everyone is very friendly and works cooperatively with each other. Due to the small sized team, I have been learning a variety of skills. I have worked 1 to 1 with the Collection Manager, but also I have expanded my understanding and experience of other cultures whilst working at the museum. You never go wrong with a cup of tea and biscuit with nice and friendly colleagues.
I wanted to gain communication skills working with individuals and improve self-management skills by monitoring my performance. It has been so much fun at the museum and I enjoyed being involved in other tasks at the museum as well. Furthermore, I have been so fortunate to gain more knowledge of rugby football. Hopefully, I can watch a rugby game at Twickenham Stadium in the future! From all of the staff at the World Rugby Museum, thank you Younji for your hard work and good luck in your future career!
