Looking at different ways museums attempt to interact with the public through a digital medium can tell a lot about the area. In this assignment, I was able to pick a local museum site and interact with it. I chose a site called Clio which gives the viewer a background of the area that can be read or listened to. After that, there is either a walking tour of the area available, virtual tours of the museum if possible, and other small interactive features. This site is available for the computer or as a mobile app so users can take it with them on the experience.
I chose the Fairfax Museum & Visitor Center. After living here for almost two years now, it was a great way for me to experience the area like a tourist and a resident all the same. Digital History with walking tours have begun a new pathway to connect with the public. This started to connect with people that do not like or have the ability to be in a brick-and-mortar museum. There is now a way for the people to interact with history that my better fit their learning style. Having a different learning style pushes back against the thought that history is only memorizing dates and people. That is only true part of the time!
I truly enjoy that part about DH though. To have an audience that is much less limited to what they can experience by the walls of a building, also allows for more interdisciplinary conversations. The National Parks Service can now be involved in daily public discussions more than ever! Interdisciplinary work for the humanities field is being recognized for its importance as historians no longer silo system themselves and others. In the beginning, historians stayed in their own corner of academia to think and rethink the work of their peers. Then they began to branch out. Using psychology, philosophy, and other parts of the humanities, we get different schools of thought and thinkers like Michel Foucault.
Bringing this back to DH, finding new ways of thinking has helped the public see how nature and philosophy can play into history can help them to question it in their own way. Asking the public to engage with history, to me, is asking for curiosity and broader think about the past and the future. Giving people access to their local history in a easy format for them to digest is an amazing way to get that process started.