I am attempting to generate an online exhibit to display and discuss the experiences of individuals affiliated with the House of Industry and Refuge in Aboyne, Ontario. This building was created in 1877 through government funding to provide relief to those unable with nowhere else to go. Every county was required to have a House of Industry and Refuge to improve the quality of life for specific individuals. The House in Aboyne, commonly known as the Poor House, was designed as a self-sufficient farm. This meant the individuals living there, if able bodied, were required to work the farm. This covered the cost of their accommodations to ensure the House was a beneficial institution to the rest of society. Individuals were admitted based on certain criteria, but overall because of the inability to function within society. According to records, people could be admitted because of:
– Old age |
– Sickness |
– Idiotic |
– Single/unwed mothers |
– Vagrants |
– Destitution |
– Abandonment |
– Lack of support |
|
People were only able to enter the House with the suggestion of the Town Reeve. Once an individual was admitted, extensive efforts were required to get out. Some younger and able men were hired out as farm labour during the summer and then returned in the off-season. Other than that, individuals were required to provide proof that they were able to take care of themselves outside of the House. Some did manage to prove this, but often ended up back in the House later on in life.
Goals and Project Context
The main goal of my project is educational. I have already discussed with the museum director, Janice Hindley, the potential to feature this project as an online exhibit associated with the museum. The Poor House building, now home to the Wellington County Museum and Archives, is very important for local history. Despite this, many people in the surrounding area do not know what happened at “the scary building at the top of the hill.” Many of the locals I have talked to also do not have the time or desire to come into the museum. With an online exhibit, I am hoping to draw a larger audience and allow more people to learn about the building. It helps to remove the issue of transportation and timing and can also permit more information to be shared.
This project is a historical project. This means I will be completing research with both primary and secondary sources. I have already spent lots of time researching in the archives and on the online database and will continue to gather more information from them. Because it is designed to educate the public on a historical topic, I will be following a similar work pattern as the curators would for a physical exhibit. I do also want to ensure that my sources and information are academically equivalent to those used in a history research paper.
I have also looked at other online exhibits to help develop mine. I looked at the Museum of History’s exhibit about the Morning Star art displayed on the ceiling of their museum (http://www.historymuseum.ca/morningstar/). This exhibit features a semi-interactive version of their piece of art. On a specific page, it allows the visitor to click on buttons to learn more about specific aspects of the work. This further information is offered in the forms of video, images, or text areas. I also explored the Royal Ontario Museum’s exhibit about the Burgess Shale (http://www.burgess-shale.rom.on.ca/en/index.php). This exhibit seemed to have a setup similar to those seen on the Omeka website. It had multiple pages, some with videos giving the visitor a glimpse at what the shale would have looked like in the prehistoric times. Both of these exhibits provided me with helpful ideas for displaying my information and creating an interactive experience for the user.
Data Acquisition
My project is designed to be a continuation of the existing exhibit at the Wellington County Museum. The exhibit is called “If These Walls Could Speak” (http://www.wellington.ca/en/discover/ifthesewallscouldspeakthehouseofindustryandrefuge.asp#Follow%20link%20to%20If%20These%20Walls%20Could%20Speak%20page) and was created by Susan Dunlop, the museum’s curator. It gives the visitors to the museum the history of the building and a slight glimpse into life at the House. Due to physical restrictions, the exhibit is unable to provide a sense of what it was like to actually live there. I will be using some information from the exhibit and the three dimensional model created by the Museum Technician, Phil Dietrich. The resources are also quite limited for this specific building as it is small town history, so I will be using many of the same sources as they did to create the original exhibit, including images.
Tool Application
I have had some difficulty determining which digital tools I want to use to create this project. At the moment, I have decided to use wix.com to create a website for the exhibit. I may change my method after an Omeka workshop if I think it will be better suited for my idea. Currently however, the website does appear to be sufficient. I am also becoming more comfortable with web design, making a website a reasonable choice.
Google SketchUp was also used to design the original three dimensional model. Because of this, I have been using it to further edit the model. I have also found that SketchUp has an animate option which I have been figuring out. I am planning on using this option to give the visitor the experience of actually being in the House. I am hoping this will help the visitors to feel more connected to the house as there have been many request for an exhibit displaying what the rooms would have looked like. The Museum of History in Ottawa used a tool called krpano Panorama Viewer (http://krpano.com/) to create a video document that is user controlled. I have also been looking into using this program, though it seems to be more difficult to download onto my laptop. Once it is loaded, I will also have to see if it would work with digitally created files instead of photographs. It is designed to specifically work with an image which is why I am unsure of the practicality of it for this project.
New Skill Development
This project has helped me to develop many different technical skills. As a history student, researching has been a skill I have been developing since my first year of university. Because this topic has very few public sources about it, I have been required to further my research skills, especially online. This topic is requiring me to search other places than the standard search engine. I have been exploring the internet databases of specific archives, including the Wellington County Archives. The House was also known by many different names and because of that, I have had to change my search terms to try to optimize the results.
I have also been learning how to use specific programs on the computer. My program knowledge has been pretty limited up until this point. This project has encouraged me to explore other programs available for free download. With SketchUp, I have been developing my three dimensional modelling skills which were previously non-existent. Prior to this project, I had never attempted to create a three dimensional model on the computer. Phil from the museum taught me about the different capabilities possible with SketchUp. It has been a slow process to learn the program as it was very overwhelming at first, but it is getting easier. I have also consulted YouTube to find tutorial videos about the program and these have helped me discover many different possibilities for the program.
I have also started to develop my web design skills. Before this course, I had very little experience with website design. Wix has been very useful in helping to further these skills. It is user-friendly and self-explanatory for the most part. It has been making this project much easier, which is allowing me more time to do research and work on other sections of the project. Wix is allowing me to create a professional looking website without needing to know the extensive and difficult HTML coding.
Academic Rationale
While this project is a public history project, it has many different academic aspects. From an academic point of view, this project provides a collective source for the topic. This website will portray my interpretation of the sources, but will also provide links to the actual documents or to the databases in which the documents are found. This would allow an individual researching the House to be able to find sources pertaining to the experiences in the building without being required to do extensive searching.
From a museum perspective, I also recognize the need for online exhibits. With the shift to digital, museums are now able to provide more information in an online exhibit then they are in a physical one. When teaching the public, complying to their methods of learning maximizes the amount of information and enjoyment they get out of the exhibit.
Online exhibits also expand the audiences of an exhibit. The internet is globally accessible; meaning anyone around the globe could see this project. This not only helps the museum but it also helps the spread of knowledge. Because the archives are not searchable through a search engine, researchers have to know about the website to use it. With an online exhibit linking to the archives, it could be found through an internet search engine. This would mean anyone searching for the topic on the internet could have access to the archives.