National Park College (NPC) Honors Program student Miriam Baldwin is spending her
summer as an intern at the Garland County Historical Society (GCHS). Honors Program
students can earn credit for approved internships as part of their Honors Seminar
class.
“I have always liked history,” said Baldwin. “When I came in here for my internship
and I saw all of this stuff surrounding me, the very old and really historical Hot
Springs, I was like, ‘Oh, this is the place for me’.” Baldwin said she was impressed
with the expansive collections housed at the GCHS. “We have the yearbooks and the
census records and all of these books written by many locals here in Hot Springs.”
Baldwin’s first project was to reorganize the GCHS microfilm collection. The GCHS
has a new microfilm machine that was purchased with a grant from the Oaklawn Foundation.
She is indexing each film, adding it to the software catalog and archiving them to
make them easier to locate. The collection spans from 1875 to 2013 and includes newspapers
such as the Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, the Hot Springs New Era, and other early
papers from the area. Baldwin also plans to use her experience to complete her Honors
program capstone project.
GCHS Executive Director, Liz Robbins said Baldwin has been a tremendous asset to
the organization in her short time there. “We are delighted to have Miriam here. It’s
a great opportunity for us to connect with some of the younger people and it’s so
exciting when younger people love history. We want to do everything we can to encourage
that.”
Baldwin graduated from Lake Hamilton High School in 2017 and will complete her associate
degree at NPC in May. She plans to transfer to Arkansas Tech University to study public
history and hopes to work as a curator in a museum one day. She says she was inspired
to this career path by a high school history teacher who encouraged her love of history.
Pictured is Baldwin at the Garland County Historical Society beside the new microfilm
machine that was purchased with a grant from the Oaklawn Foundation.
