PORTAGE | Summers spent with her grandfather sifting through soil in plowed fields for treasures from the past instilled in Renee Sloane an appreciation for antiques.

She plans to continue sifting through history with a career in a historical museum. She is getting her feet wet in the field this summer by working as an intern with the Portage Community Historical Society. She is archiving the group's collection of photos and other memorabilia.

"We're very fortunate that she came along," said Al Goin. "We needed her, and she needed us."

Sloane, 31, of Portage, attends Indiana University Northwest where she is pursuing an independent study of museum studies. Since mid-May, she has worked on Fridays and Saturdays in a specially constructed fire-safe room tucked inside the historical group's museum at Countryside Park, 5250 U.S. 6.

There, with the assistance of Goin and other volunteers from the historical society, she pores over yellowed photographs, graduation announcements, school yearbooks and other records to create an archive. She is starting with information about area schools. When she is finished with that, Sloane said she will move on to archive the fire department memorabilia.

Her archive work includes preserving the artifacts to protect them from damage, documenting everything in the museum's collection and organizing items into a system that makes it easy for others to find the information they're seeking. She is copying photos and preserving the originals in special boxes designed to protect them. The copies will be exhibited.

"She's just been a godsend to us," Goin said. "This stuff was just accumulating, and nobody was cataloging it."

Kathy Heckman, a volunteer with the group, has been collecting and organizing information gleaned from the historical society's continuing series of exhibits about Portage's early settlers. Families of settlers such as John August Samuelson submit photos and other family keepsakes for temporary display at the museum.

Heckman makes copies of the photographs to keep for the museum's collection. She also compiles a family tree and oral histories.

Most of the museum's treasures remain undocumented, though. Sloane said she found boxes of old photos and other items tucked in a shed on the park property. There, she also found an antique wicker rocker in need of restoration.

Her internship ends in mid-August, but Sloane said her work will continue.

"I'm not going to leave," she said. "This is basically my pet project. This is what I like to do and what I want to do for a living."