Birthplace of a Nation: The Mount Vernon Online Museum

George Washington, as the first president of the United States, has wormed his way into many different facets of our lives.  Besides his role in the founding of our nation, we all learned the apocryphal story of the cherry tree as children.  I remember a jump rope chant and an alternate version of the song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" that made use of his name, and I'm sure there are many other references to this Founding Father out there.  Now George Washington and his home have found a place on the internet, in the form of the Mount Vernon Online Museum.

Mount Vernon was the Washington family's estate in Virginia, and for over a hundred years it has operated as a historic house open for visitors.  It's pretty unusual for a historic house to have a strong online presence (mainly because these museums are often small and poorly funded), but since Mount Vernon is so well-known and heavily visited I suppose an online museum was the logical next step.  Currently there are four exhibits:  The Making of a Military Man, Setting George Washington's Table, Rereading Washington Through His Library, and a section about excavation at Mount Vernon.

Each of these exhibits is accompanied by five images of artifacts in the Mount Vernon collection, which are well-labeled and explained with just the right amount of information.  I like that the exhibits tackle somewhat unusual subjects, and not just the typical military-and-politics parts of Washington's life.  It lets us see some day-to-day aspects of this great man's life, and by showing some but not all of Mount Vernon's collection, it becomes a great selling point for the physical museum.

Beyond the images and the topics, though, I'm not terribly impressed with these exhibits.  The main content is long paragraphs set in a small text box, which you have to scroll and click through to read in their entirety.  This reminded me overly detailed Wikipedia pages and made me skim through the information instead of reading and trying to connect it with the objects.  In a physical exhibit I imagine that this text would be spread out throughout a gallery, making it more palatable, but having it all scrunched into one place online isn't really user-friendly.

Hopefully this is just the starting point for Mount Vernon.  I imagine that as their online capacity grows, they'll learn what works online and what doesn't and apply that to make their virtual content even better. I would love to see more objects and have the exhibits based around them instead of around text.  There's got to be so much contained within Mount Vernon that could be shared online, and I hope to be able to check back at a later date and see what new things the museum has for us to explore.


The Mount Vernon Online Museum
Website:  www.mountvernon.org/pre-exhibits

International Mail: The Online Museum of Persian Stamps

To be honest, I've never really understood how people get into stamp collecting.  Sure, stamps can have interesting images on them, but spending time and tens of thousands of dollars to acquire what are essentially stickers seems a little strange to me.  And now that mail volume is plummeting as people choose to do more and more over the internet, stamps seem to be less and less relevant.  But they still are fun to look at, and sometimes they can tell stories.  At least, this is what I got from the Online Museum of Persian Stamps.

A project of FarsiNet, this museum is compiled from personal collections and visitor submissions.  The stamps cover a wide time period, from 1889 to the 2003 earthquake.  Through the images on the stamps you can trace Iran's modern history: as a battle site during World War One, as a dynasty rules by the Shahs, and finally as an Islamic republic.

Most of this information, though, you'll have to glean from the stamps themselves.  The museum is frustratingly sparse on information, with text accompanying fewer than half of its image galleries.  The information that is presented is good, and there are a couple of links to outside sources, but for the most part you are left gazing at stamps without explanation.  It would really benefit the museum to have interpretation explaining just why all these stamps were considered important enough to display.

To the layperson, this is frustrating.  But I suppose that the philatelists among us, who enjoy stamps for their pure physical form, would be much more appreciative of this museum.  I really want to like the idea of a museum telling a nation's history through stamps, because it's a fascinating concept that our mail can tell our stories.  To the non-stamp collectors, I would recommend keeping this museum open in one tab while simultaneously clicking through a history of Iran on a more informative website.


The Online Museum of Persian Stamps
Website:  www.farsinet.com/tambr

Children's Play: The Helen Keller Kids Museum

This is the first time I've come across a virtual children's museum, and I've got to say I'm not sure how I feel about the whole concept.  I work at a children's museum with a physical space, and everyday I encounter kids running through out exhibits, exploring, touching everything and learning by doing.  The idea of a children's museum where the only tactile thing visitors do is click from one page to the next seems like the exact opposite of my expectations.

The Helen Keller Kids Museum, no matter what its form, would never really lend itself to interactive exhibits.  The subject here is a historical figure who is mainly known through her life story and her writings.  Perhaps, then, the internet is the best place to display a museum devoted to this fascinating subject.  And since so many children learn about Helen Keller during their elementary school days, it is nice to have a lot of information on her life gathered in one kid-friendly place.

A project of the American Foundation for the Blind, the Helen Keller Kids Museum delivers the story of Helen Keller's life in segments that focus on the different stages of her development (her childhood, for example, or her activism work).  Each of these sections are broken down further into small chunks of text accompanied by photographs.  The writing is pretty well suited for children, and the photographs are never paired with too much text.  I like how the information is conveyed, in a way that's easy for children to understand.

This is what the Helen Keller Kids Museum does well - but that's about all they do.  There is a section where Helen Keller's great-grandniece answers questions that people send in, but there are no other parts to this museum.  A few games or other interactives would be nice - perhaps something that conveys just what living in a dark, noiseless world would be like.  And what about deaf, blind children who are living today?  What are their stories?  There is a lot of potential to make these disabilities relevant to today's children, but the museum doesn't follow those paths.

The Helen Keller Kids Museum is very informative in a child-centered way, and I can see it being a great resource for the countless children who are tasked each year with writing Helen Keller biographies.  I'm also grateful to the museum for making me aware of the possibilities of bringing children's museums online and breaking down barriers to learning.  The model that the Helen Keller Kids Museum presents, though, is not really analogous to physical children's museums.  Kids need to be able to explore and play alongside gaining knowledge, and I don't see that happening with this museum.  With just a few changes and additions, though, this museum could lead the way in virtual children's museums.


Helen Keller Kids Museum
Mission:  The American Foundation for the Blind designed the museum to teach kids about Helen Keller's remarkable life.
Website:  www.braillebug.org/hkmuseum.asp

To Bomb or Not To Bomb: The Online Museum of the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History

It's interesting that I stumbled across the online portion of the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History recently.  I just got done reading an article in today's New York Times magazine about Iran's nuclear ambitions and the many problems that's spawned for the wider world.  Even more than two decades out from the end of the Cold War, nuclear weapons are a serious matter in international politics - which is why I'm disappointed in the way these online exhibits choose to present nuclear history.

The National Museum of Nuclear Science and History was chartered by an act of Congress and is a Smithsonian Institute affiliate.  With these credentials I would expect the museum to be an unbiased source of information - which is what they claim to be in their mission - and to have a decent online presence.  Alas, this is not the case.  In terms of layout, the online exhibits range from boring to frustrating.  The History section is nothing but text accompanied by tiny, un-enlargeable pictures.  The narrative veers all over the place, jumping to ancient history mid-paragraph or inserting addresses of publications into the body of a passage.  Some of the pages look like drafts that accidentally got published.

And that's the best section.  You can also choose to learn about Today, Future, and Other Resources, but the Today section is totally blank, and the Future section contains only a link to a campaign for the physical museum.  There are only two websites suggested in the Other Resources section, so if you really want to know more you're going to have to search on your own.

But what really bothered me about these online exhibits was that there is no real voice of dissent.  The opening image to the exhibits shows a woman holding a sign reading "War Ends", which tells you how the museum feels about nuclear weapons.  Throughout the History section there is really no information on anyone who believed nuclear buildup wasn't such a good idea.  For example, in the section The Decision to Drop, we hear only from the pilot of the Enola Gay, who was convinced that the United States made the right decision in bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Nowhere do we hear from anyone who opposed these strikes, or from the thousands of Japanese civilians who suffered.  Curious too is the fact that in a long account of Einstein's contribution to the nuclear effort, we never hear about his regrets in contributing to the atomic bomb.

It can be easy to forget that nuclear weaponry was once feared by citizens across the globe.  I'll never grasp what it must have felt like to know that world leaders considered unleashing nuclear arsenals to be a viable option in world affairs, but it's wise not to forget the troubling realities of past generations.  So I'm not sure why the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History has chosen to sweep all this under the rug and package it in such an unappealing presentation.  Perhaps the physical museum is a more nuanced and informative place, but based on their online presence they've got a lot of work to do.


National Museum of Nuclear Science and History
Mission:  To bring an informational, objective history of nuclear science to life - for everyone, everywhere.
Website:  www.nuclearmuseum.org/online-museum

China on My Mind: The China Online Museum

I know that I sometimes criticize virtual museums that don't have enough pop to them.  It's fun and engaging when you can do cool things in an online museum and feel at least somewhat like you're traveling through an exhibit.  But once in a while, it's nice just to be able to look at things and learn about their history.  That's the strength of the China Online Museum - although it's mainly a collection of images with information, the way it's organized and laid out makes it a valuable resource.

The China Online Museum lets you explore five different types of Chinese art:  bronzes, calligraphy, painting, ceramics and carving.  The history presented for these art forms goes back over 2,000 years, and in many cases Chinese characters are included alongside English spellings.  For each genre of art, you can learn about different artists, subjects, time periods or mediums.  Pages are set up with information at the top and images below - and in some cases, you can choose the amount of information you want to view (which is great for people who are easily overwhelmed).

The images themselves are very high-quality, and so even though there aren't many pictures to illustrate each style of art, the ones that are available serve the museum's content well.  I would rather have a limited number of good pictures than a smorgasbord of whatever a curator can scour from across the web.  I also like that images pop up on the screen when you click them, so that you can view them undistracted by other content.

The only thing I don't like about the China Online Museum is that there's not specific information for every image.  Only some of the pieces are identified with their time period and provenance, and very few have explanations of what is represented in the art.  Many of the images contain a source link, but these aren't always helpful either.

But other than this problem, the China Online Museum is wonderful.  I can't imagine that there are many other places online that have collected so many examples of Chinese art in one place and organized them into a coherent narrative.  Even if you're not an art fanatic, I would recommend at least browsing.  The images are beautiful, the information is plentiful, and the dedication behind this museum is inspiring.


Chine Online Museum
Mission:  To provide a general introduction to China and Chinese culture, with a strong emphasis on Chinese art.
Website:  www.chinaonlinemuseum.com

Jumping Across the Pond: The British Museum Online Tours

Someday, hopefully soon, I'll be able to visit the U.K.  I'd like to be able to visit Scotland and Ireland and see the English countryside, and of course I want to visit London.  I'm especially interested in seeing the British Museum and I imagine I'll be one of those people who spends a whole day just wandering through the galleries.  Until that day, though, I can satisfy my curiosity with the British Museum Online Tours.

I haven't seen another virtual museum or virtual collection from a physical museum that bills itself as a tour.  Usually these entities like to refer to their online portions as exhibits, probably because they're hoping a web-based platform can provide an interactive experience that at least partially simulates a real, self-guided visit.  That's not what the British Museum aims to do here - there are no 3D renderings, animations or audio accompaniments.  The Online Tours are simply collections of objects with accompanying text.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, because the wealth of images and information available online is astounding.  You can view hundreds of objects from civilizations across the globe, and also nose through the images from several exhibits that deal with the modern world.  The images are high quality and many include notes about whether they can be used in the public domain.  I imagine that these online tours are quite like what you might encounter if you took a docent's tour at the British Museum:  a lot of looking and listening, with a heaping dose of expert opinion.

But if you're looking for something extra - a chance to explore the objects on your own terms or question the curatorial viewpoint - you're not going to find that here.  There is much more that the British Museum could do with their online collections that they have chosen not to pursue.  Multi-angle viewing would be nice, as would a chance to ask questions or add comments.  Perhaps a more unified online presence would allow visitors to connect these cultures and their objects to understand our present-day interdependencies and understand just how the British Museum ended up holding onto a headdress from the Marquesas Islands.

Still, the fact that these objects are even available for me to view at home, 3,500 miles from London, is amazing.  Even if I never do get a chance to visit the U.K., I can see at least some of their collections in vivid detail.  For that I'm grateful, as are many others who only want to know what the curator thinks.  I just wonder what else the British Museum could do with their online tours if they cared to try.



The British Museum Online Tours
Website:  www.britishmuseum.org/explore/online_tours.aspx

Colonists Online: Colonial Williamsburg Online Museum

I've been to Colonial Williamsburg twice in my life.  I don't remember the first time, because I was a little over a year old and I napped through the whole experience.  The second time was in the 8th grade, when I went as part of a school field trip, and I accidentally poked someone in the face with a stick that was supposed to be a musket.  I don't think I gathered too much knowledge during either trip (except for now understanding that muskets were sharp), but thanks to the exhibits Colonial Williamsburg has put online I can learn in the comfort of my own home.

Right now Colonial Williamsburg has four exhibits up online:  Historic Threads, Conserving the Murray Sisters, Coins and Currency in Colonial America, and Mapping Colonial America.  I was really excited about Historic Threads, because I love historical fashion, but this was the most disappointing of the exhibits.  Not because of the content - the images of gowns, suits and accessories are wonderful and are accompanied by great information about materials and time periods.  What was frustrating about Historic Threads was that it didn't work very well.  It's next to impossible to navigate between images - I would click the forward button and the previous image would stay on the screen, or the text would load but not its accompanying picture, or I would be left hanging in some kind of black limbo.  I found that the only way to get a screen to load properly was to refresh each page, which was so annoying that I gave up and moved on before I had seen half the exhibit.

Conserving the Murray Sisters takes on an interesting subject matter:  the scientific process of conserving artifacts.  Colonial Williamsburg was given a painting of these sisters dating from 1794, but it was too wrecked to display in its initial condition.  A series of images in this exhibit show the different steps conservationists took to restore the painting, including viewing it under different types of light.

Coins and Currency in Colonial America tries very hard to make a dull subject interesting by adding in a lot of features.  The coins are sorted by time period, from Columbus's travels to the end of the American Revolution, and are accompanied by notes on their history and metallurgy.  There are plenty of opportunities to seek out extra information and compare coins from the era, and you can even see a scale of each coin relative to a quarter.

Mapping Colonial America is probably the best online exhibit.  It's set up a lot like Coins and Currency, with maps arranged historically and information gathered in text boxes.  There's also a timeline running along the bottom that automatically sets itself to point at the time when each map was created.  The images of the maps have a great resolution - you can zoom in on each one and see a lot of detail.  On one map I was able to pinpoint the location of my hometown and still read the names of the surrounding villages and rivers.

Colonial Williamsburg's online exhibits are a great supplement to a visit and or an introduction for those who haven't been before.  Though some of the subject matter is a little dry, I would encourage you to check out all the functioning exhibits to see what you can glean from each.  As for Historic Threads, I really hope someone can get it to function better, because I need some sartorial escapism.

Colonial Williamsburg Online Museum Exhibits
Website:  www.history.org/history/museums/online_exhibits.cfm

Patents and Prejudice: The Black Inventor Online Museum

I can tell you when Black History Month rolls around (it's March) because we celebrated it every year when I was in elementary and middle school.  My teachers always put up illustrations of notable black Americans, and I learned a lot about George Washington Carver, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois.  There were other important people we learned about - usually though assigned reports we had to present - but the details of their accomplishments are sketchy in my mind.  I know that a black doctor invented the modern blood bank, and that traffic lights were the creation of a black man, but just who these men were escapes me.  Thanks to the Black Inventor Online Museum, I can learn more about these inventors, as well as many others who made devices we now take for granted.

The Black Inventor Online Museum is, simply, a collection of biographies interspersed with photographs and other images of these famous creators.  In this regard, the Black Inventor Online Museum isn't terribly innovative, but it makes up for this in the wealth of information it provides.  The museum spans most of black history in America:  from Benjamin Banneker's work planning out the nation's capital for George Washington, to IBM engineer Mark Dean.  The biographies are highly detailed, and most include either an image or a technical drawing of each inventor's work.

Using the helpful search page, I was quickly able to learn that Charles Drew was the doctor who discovered how to store blood for long-term use, and Garret Morgan patented the modern traffic signal.  I also learned that black Americans invented the mailbox, the raised golf tee and the beer keg tap. 

The only problem I have with the Black Inventor Online Museum is that, at times, it seems to be a swamp of advertisements.  Besides having Google ads on every page, there are also ads in the middle of each biography, and on some pages there are links to related books on Amazon.  I understand that online museums may need to generate revenue to ensure their survival, but having ads all over the place is distracting.

Don't let this deter you, though, because the Black Inventor Online Museum is a great place.  Whether you're a student who needs some inspiration for your Black History Month project, or an adult who just want to know more about where our modern conveniences come from, this museum is highly informative.  You'll leave having learned something you, and feeling thankful that someone more intelligent than yourself had the foresight to invent the third rail.

Black Inventor Online Museum

Mission:  The Black Inventor Online Museum is a look at the great and often unrecognized pioneers in the field of invention and innovation.

Website:  www.blackinventor.com

Computers, Not Fruit: The Apple Museum

I was all prepared not to like the Apple Museum.  After all, I'm not a computer geek - my eyes glaze over every time one of my technophilic friends starts talking about coding or trying to explain the new features on their iPhone.  So imagine my surprise as I was working my way through the Apple Museum and thinking, You know, this is actually kind of interesting.

The cool parts of the Apple Museum are the sections on Apple Facts, Codenames and Prototypes.  Apple Facts explains things like why the company was named Apple, where the Apple logo came from and what Carl Sagan has to do with Macs.  Codenames gives a pretty detailed list of what products were called internally as they were being developed (although, frustratingly, the origin of these names isn't explained).  Prototypes is my favorite part of this museum, because it includes pictures and descriptions of Apple products that were developed but never caught on in the market.  Who knew that Apple once tried to market a screen-based portable phone called W.A.L.T., or that there was a computer called Stumpy?

There's also a comprehensive Apple Data section, and although this part made no sense to me, it has a lot of detail on a lot of products, so I'm sure more computer-minded people would find it useful.  There are also biographies of four of Apple's founders and early developers - Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Rod Holt and Jef Raskin - which are nice additions to the website, but I suspect that you could find a lot more information on Wikipedia.

Unfortunately, amid this wealth of information, there are some problems.  The Products section of the website is completely empty, and the in the Timelines section only three of the five links actually work (and these are just data dumps of dates and products).  There is also a History section which could have a lot of potential, if only it weren't laid out in a Cliff Notes-style outline.  The text in the museum is also a little hard to work through because it's just not well-written.

If you can ignore these frustrations and just focus on the good parts, the Apple Museum really is quirky, informative and surprisingly fun.  If you love computers, this museum is for you - and even if you don't, I would recommend at least browsing.  You may find yourself, like me, beginning to reconsider that maybe computers aren't so nerdy after all.

The Apple Museum
Mission:  The Apple Museum of a non-commercial project, founded in 1998.  With our continuously growing database, we have become the largest and most comprehensive Apple history website on the internet.
Website:  www.theapplemuseum.com

Sink-sational: The Online Titanic Museum

If you're like me, you're excited for next year's 3D re-release of James Cameron's Titanic (not because the movie is any good, but because I want to see that ship crack in half in lifelike detail).  The movie premiers in just five months, so in the meantime you may want to brush up on your Titanic history.  For a shallow immersion into this ship's iconography, check out the Online Titanic Museum.

Built around a private collection of Titanic memorabilia, this museum features four exhibits of objects.  The Unsinkable Titanic shows advertisements for the ship and images of some of its furnishings.  Disaster Strikes is a gallery of newspaper articles and postmortem commemorative books and sheet music (and you can even listen to some snippets of song).  White Star Line displays artifacts with the White Star Line insignia, which were on board the Titanic and its sister ships Olympic and Brittanic.  Finally, the gallery simply named Related Items is a mishmash of images that couldn't be slotted in elsewhere.

The images are of pretty good quality, and there is plenty of information given for each object.  I was also impressed that this museum decided to display not just historical photographs and newspapers, but also White Star Line promotional materials and artifacts recovered from the ship.  These really help in conveying the excitement surrounding Titanic's maiden voyage, and show how passengers were living on board the ship in the days and hours before it sank.

I'm a little disappointed, however, that there's not more information on how this museum came to be.  The museum's home page states that it's built from a personal collection, but whose collection is it?  Does it belong to an institution or an individual?  Why did this person or place start collecting, and what is their interest in Titanic history?  Knowing these things would help to better evaluate how trustworthy the objects and their interpretations are, yet this information is unavailable.

Still, it is interesting to be able to look at chair slats and upholstery and White Star Line china that are almost a hundred years old and have (in some cases) been sitting on the bottom of the ocean for a few decades.  I'm sure most of us approach the history of the Titanic with more than a little morbid curiosity.  This museum - featuring furniture and postcards that were handled by people who didn't know they would be dead in a matter of days - helps satisfy that curiosity.

The Online Titanic Museum
Mission:  The online Titanic Museum is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Titanic; her twin sisters Olympic and Brittanic and the White Star Line - the shipping line that owned and operated the three "Olympic Class" steamers.
Website:  www.onlinetitanicmuseum.com

History, eh: The Virtual Museum of Canada

Canada is a huge country - the second largest in the world - and many parts of it are sparsely inhabited.  How did museums in some of these far-flung regions manage to reach millions of visitors and share their resources around the world?  By setting up a virtual museum.

The Virtual Museum of Canada was created by the Canadian Heritage Information Network as a way to bring together more than 3,000 museums and historic sites across the country.  It currently hosts 790 virtual exhibits, comprising nearly a million images.  Many of these exhibits, like Prince Edward Island - Memories of WWII, relate to Canadian history and culture.  These exhibits tend to be a little dry, since they are presented as a series of photos and maps with catalog descriptions and minimal interpretation.

But don't be turned off by these history slide shows, because if you look hard there's more exciting exhibits to be seen.  The exhibits aren't Canada-specific - such as Anno Domini:  Jesus Through the Centuries - are much more interactive and engaging.  And if you visit the VMC Lab, you'll get to experience the latest virtual museum technology.  The Lab is a space to view some of the more digitally advanced exhibits that Canadian museums have put out.  At the Thule Whalebone House exhibit, for example, you can see a 3D rendering of the kind of house that First Nations people once lived in.

The Virtual Museum of Canada offers some other cool resources, like a podcast series on unusual topics in Canadian history and section called My VMC, where you can assemble your own personal exhibit space.  There's also Teachers' Centre (aww, Canadian spelling) that not only provides classroom resources, but also allows teachers to upload and share their lesson plans and projects.

So, if you're curious about Canada's history but don't want to spend the time and money traveling all over the Great Frozen North, check out the Virtual Museum of Canada.  You can see plenty historical photos and objects, and you can also use emerging technologies to explore places you might otherwise never visit.

The Virtual Museum of Canada
Mission:  As an endless source of discoveries, virtualmuseum.ca is a unique interactive space that brings together Canadian museum collections and riches in a variety of thought-provoking and instructive contents.  It's the window on current museum news and the reference guide to planning an outing.
Website:  www.museevirtuel-virtualmuseum.ca/index-eng.jsp