A time machine nears the finish line (Jamestown)

Jamestown Rediscovery curator Bly Straube sits wearily at her desk, surveying the stacks of reference books that have grown up over the past few weeks to surround her.

At least half a dozen jumbled piles encircle the small cleared space where she writes, with some reaching 10 or 12 volumes high. Scattered in between and around the floor of her U-shaped workstation is an even greater number of folders, articles and reports, all of them focused on such things as the rings, buttons, buckles and other personal objects once owned by the first permanent English in America.

Much more work has taken place over the past year, during which time Straube and her colleagues, including Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, Preservation Virginia program coordinator Ann Berry, tracked down hundreds of period images and quotations in order to illustrate the artifacts. Archaeologist David Givens reviewed more than 10 years of photographs from the nearby James Fort dig for use in interactive digital viewing stations as well as traditional wall graphics.

But with the 7,500-square-foot gallery nearly finished, a huge fleet of glass display cases is being moved in, positioned and cleaned. Soon the installation of the artifacts will be the only task that remains. And that means Straube must hand in her last pieces of copy for some of the earliest and most important links to the founding of English America.