Cell Phone Tours

Get your phone out to follow along with this post.

I was at the Seattle Art Museum a few months ago and was impressed by the cell phone interpretation they have running through the museum. In an age when museums are going through expensive contortions trying to use technology to improve visitor experiences, I found the cell phone tour a simple and elegant a solution.

The pictures below show a few examples, and the phone numbers are still active. Go ahead and call them as you look at the images. (I was going to download the audio and link it here--but you people need to meet me halfway here!)

This carved argylite box is accompanied by an interview with a modern Indian carver. Call 206-866-3222 ext. 123 to listen.

This 1850 ceremonial headdress of the Tlingit people is enhanced by the creation myth it portrays. Call 206-866-3222 ext. 124.

One more example is this modern glass interpretation of a Killer Whale. Call 206-866-3222 ext. 122.

You can see all of my photos from the SAM here. The museum also put all of the audio up online for free download. I downloaded a bunch of them before I came to the museum, but once I was there i found it far easier to dial the numbers in front of me than to fiddle with iTunes on my phone. A museum friend told me that these phone tours get used even after the exhhibit comes down, apparently from people who are looking at their vacation pictures and dialing the numbers.

So in conclusion--cell tours, yay! Of course museums can make mobile technology far more involved and complicated if they like. This NY Times article surveys some of the mobile apps for iPhones and Androids that museums are beginning to use. What jumps out at me from the article is that none of the apps seem to be very good! And how many of your visitors are carrying smart phones, and will have downloaded your app in advance of their visit? I think around 20% of Americans carry smart phones. And of course there are all kinds of interactive kiosks and other intensive technologies out there, all of which seem expensive, prone to breaking, and quickly outdated. By comparison a cell tour is dirt cheap to produce, leverages a piece of technology that nearly visitor already has, and has a potential reach beyond the museum walls.

Open Letter to the Curators of the Baron Von Munchausen Historic Home

Update: I heard back from the curator of the museum and she really let me have it!


Note: What is the obligation of a public historian when the history you are presented at a historic site is not right? Do you smile and nod? Politely correct the presenter? The following is a real letter I sent off this week to the curators of a historic home in the American south. A few names have been changed to protect the well-meaning--my goal is not to shame the museum but to help it improve.

Friends:

Thank you for the very enjoyable tour of the Baron Von Munchausen historic home today. The passion and commitment of your staff made for a terrific visit. As an academic and public historian I am fortunate to visit a lot of historic sites, and want to offer a few friendly comments, which I trust will not be taken amiss.

On our tour I was concerned about some of the historical "facts" presented by some of the staff.  I would like to refer you to this article from the Colonial Williamsburg foundation, Stuff and Nonsense: Myths that Should be History, which dispels some of the historical myths that  get passed down from one interpreter to the next and even published from time to time. Our guide repeated as fact five of the ten myths debunked by the article. Specifically:

1. Fireplace screens were not used to prevent women's wax makeup from melting. Colonial women rarely wore makeup, and it was not made of wax. Accordingly, this is not where the expression "to save face" comes from.
2. People were not shorter in the colonial period--they seem to have been almost exactly the same height as today.
3. There was no closet tax in any of the colonies. If closets were uncommon it was because people had only a few changes of clothes.
4. Colonial portrait painters did not charge extra to paint people's hands. Accordingly, this is not the origin of the phrase "to charge an arm and a leg."
5. There is no evidence that pineapples were a symbol of hospitality in the colonial era.

Some additional questionable interpretation items from the (very nice!) person who gave us our tour include:

• The story that most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were singled out by royal forces and suffered disproportionatley is a myth that gets forwarded via email. See this Snopes page which takes the myth apart: http://www.snopes.com/history/american/pricepaid.asp

• Our guide said that most women married and 12 or 13 "back in those days." There are certainly cases of that in the 18th and 19th century, but it was very rare. In the Chesapeake region in 1750 the average age at marriage was 22 for women (and 27 for men) so it was probably about the same in your town.

• Our guide said that only the wealthy knew how to read and that there was no public education for women until the mid-19th century. Literacy was fairly widespread in colonial America--according to one recent textbook, "By 1760, New England's literacy rate was 70 per cent among men and 45 per cent amongst the female population. The south saw a lower rate of between 50 per cent and 60 per cent for men and 40 per cent among women." Public education was widespread in the north.

• Many of the "and that is where we get the saying" stories our guide shared were dubious. Bad books and websites on the origins of popular sayings are legion. You local library probably has the multi-volume set of the Oxford English Dictionary which is a good source for the orignins of popular sayings.

The biggest problem with the interpretation at the Baron Munchausen House was the absence of slavery. There was no acknowledgment that Munchausen even owned slaves. Our guide referred to the slaves who ran the house as "servants" which is whitewashing history. Our guide used the word "slave" only once in passing. Slavery was at the heart of Munchausen's world. He owned many slaves and even advertised in newspapers for the return of his runaways. Slaves built the Munchausen fortune, cooked his dinner, and kept the opulent house running. A Google Book Search for "Baron Von Munchusen" + slaves provides some resources for specific information, including names and descriptions of some of Muchausen's runaway slaves. The interpretation at the Munchausen House would be richer and more interesting if you included stories of the slaves rather than omitting them.

Thank you for all you do to preserve and welcome the public to this historic treasure. The work you do has saved an important historic landmark and serves thousands of visitors. It is because what you do is so important and so good that I offer these small corrections. Feel free to contact me if you like.

Cordially,

Larry Cebula

QR Codes, Part 3: DIY

by Greg Shine, guest blogger

How do QR codes work? How can I make one?

Here’s how they work. First of all, it is staggeringly simple to make a QR Code. Although I’d love to say that it takes hours of coding and work on the interwebs to make a QR code, I’m hereby pulling back the curtain on the wizard. It ain’t rocket science. All you have to do is this:

1. Identify your data (i.e., the URL for the content you want to folks to access).
2. Open your web browser and select one of the many QR Code generators. Here’s one I use: http://qrcode.kaywa.com/
3. Enter the URL. Click enter or generate or whatever action button you use.
4. Download the resulting image using whatever process you prefer (I like the right click save options).
5. Print it out, put it up! Tweet your tweeple! Amaze your friends! Show it off to your boss!

As an educator, I still think the most important step is #1…but I’ll get to that in the next post.

Fun with Digital Content at Fort Vancouver, Part 2

Over the past ten years, efforts at Fort Vancouver have focused on telling a more complete, holistic story of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) and U.S. Army eras onsite, utilizing the extensive collections and archaeologically recovered artifacts to give voice to the past.

In the first 40 years as a national park site, the NPS had done an impressive job of researching and interpreting the contributions of Dr. John McLoughlin (and the dozens of clerks and other officers of the company) and utilizing their records and other evidence to reconstruct the stockade and buildings that are still a highlight of any visit today.

However, this story - this grand heroic narrative - was not a complete one; important parts were missing.

While the historical record provided wonderfully detailed information about the dozen or so employees making up the upper, gentleman class (and their families), with the exception of pay records it was largely silent on the hundreds of others - working class employees, their families, and others - that made up the greater Fort Vancouver community.

And this was some community. The fort's employee village, a few hundred yards west of the stockade's pickets, housed an incredibly diverse population of upwards of 600 people at times. In this village, English, French-Canadian, Scottish, Irish, Hawaiian, Iroquois, and people from over 30 different regional Native American groups lived and worked under the watchful - and controlling - eye of McLoughlin and the company's officers.

HBC and Catholic Church records, along with a few images and other documents, provided tantalizing snippets of everyday life in the village, but it has been archaeological excavation and analysis that has finally helped us bring voice to the fort's village population.

From a maintenance boneyard and Himalayan blackberry patch, archaeology has helped transform the Village to a "place" again, complete with historic roadways, two replica employee buildings, replica fencing, wayside exhibits, and a trail connecting it again to the Columbia River waterfront via an internationally renowned land bridge.

What does this have to do with augmented reality? Well, stay with me; you needed the backstory, trust me. Anyway, as this "new" site within the park, we have been experimenting with the best ways to provide historical interpretation in the Village. How do we connect visitors to the artifacts found onsite, and how do we articulate what these artifacts reveal about Village life in comparison to life inside the stockade walls?

Sure, we've developed curriculum-based education programs, costumed interpretation presentations, and wayside exhibits, but the challenge is to serve what is largely a transient audience who experiences the Village while enjoying the trails and walkways; unless you're headed to a previously scheduled program we're featuring, it really isn't a destination.

Enter Brett Oppegaard. A dynamic doctoral student and professor in Washington State University - Vancouver's acclaimed Digital Technology & Culture program, he met with me and pitched an idea for developing a mobile storytelling project utilizing augmented reality at the fort. As I listened to his idea, I immediately thought of the Village; could digital technology help visitors better connect to the many layers of its history? Yes!

The result of our initial brainstorming and Brett's subsequent leveraging of resources is the Fort Vancouver Mobile Project. For updates on the project and to see the project's mission statement, check out Brett's blog here. Here's a quick summary:

Our primary goal is to generate mobile interactive narratives, or stories that visitors to the site can immerse themselves in, through a connection with a mobile communication device. We also have been examining and researching various other modes of information sharing and platforms, from QR (quick response) codes to mobile social networking systems.

The Fort Vancouver Mobile project serves as a cutting-edge research laboratory for developments in mobile content creation that emphasize location, spatial and contextual awareness in relation to interactive and mixed-reality storytelling experiences, particularly those that take advantage of the new abilities of mobile technology to illuminate important regional and national historical narratives.

This project is very exciting for us; Brett is able to bring a fantastic digital skillset and connections with many helpful resources while we have a "place" as well as a vast array of data, science, and historical content to contribute. Perfect match? We think so. We'll certainly keep you posted as the project progresses.