Preserving & Sharing Via Technology

The last couple of days have seen an interesting convergence of 19th century atrifacts and 21st century technology at Fort Walla Walla Museum. The first item that comes to mind is the grant we received Monday; the entire operation was done online, relating to the funding of our 1805-1806 Lewis & Clark diorama.

Another idea on the horizon is to turn a cd full of pictures of regional century+ old barns into a screen saver set for purchase through the Museum Store ... we have a couple of other notions on deck in that realm, too. These are things we can do in-house to had depth to a visitor's experience at the Museum. We have a collection chock full of interesting photographs dating way back to the community's origins; surely something can be done with some of those images, too. Ditto the several books whose copyrights we control.

All of this brings me to our mission: to preserve and share Walla Walla regional heritage. A few years ago, we acquired software that allowed us to put our entire collection records into digital format. We now know exactly how many items we have in the collection at any one time and, in theory, exactly where to locate any particular artifact. Sounds simple, but we have more than 42,000 items in the collection ... and they don't sit still.

Items are routinely rotated in and out of archival storage for displays, inter-museum loans, off-campus displays (see the exhibit case in the lobby of the Marcus Whitman Hotel & Conference center), and the always possible "other" category. Digitizing the collection was a major boon to preservation, allowing us to keep track of each and every item and devote regular periodic attention to its maintenance.

If technology allows us to enhance preservation (don't forget the digitized controls of the 'climate controlled' buildings and artifact repositories), it also helps us to share the wonderful heritage of the region's past. Being able to take a home a digital chink o' the past is a whole "brave new world" for the Museum and we'll likely move more in that direction.