In partnership with our friends group (which was instrumental in getting our park established and interpretive center / exhibits built), we have had a website since 1998. (Visitors came the first week it was up!) Its goal from the start was to provide information about the Falls of the Ohio, and its natural and historical resources for anyone - whether they lived a block away or on the other side of the planet. The site has always had a virtual tour of the fossil beds (photo format, not video), educator information pages, a "discovery center" (with a wide variety of information (such as brochures, on-line articles,) on geology, archaeology, flora and fauna related to our site) and the usual -- to encourage people to visit.
The result has been very effective. We get fossil / rock ID inquiries from all over the world, comments/suggestions from educators far beyond our service area, even attendees to our teacher workshops and paleontology camp from coast to coast because of our web presence. We have several virtual exhibits from temporary exhibits from 15 years ago to our old exhibit gallery which is being replaced and will re-open in January. More virtual exhibits are in the works. To maintain a dynamic website, we have a "Featured Fossil" which changes 5 times per week. We want to develop video tours of the fossil beds. Volunteers and a local university are now creating several GPS tours on the fossil beds.
We are an Indiana state park with an exceptional museum. What we do on a small scale is may be found on many large museum websites. Go to fallsoftheohio.org to see what I'm talking about. What you see has been done by one naturalist (me) adding content incrementally over many years. We've got something like 3,000 pages of content! There are many ways for any museum to do something similar... to become a community resource, but in the WWW community, not just in your city, county, or state. You could feature a piece of artwork on a daily or week basis. Historic sites can focus on an item providing a tidbit of information (not everything known). It can be from collections or something on exhibit.
Virtual visitors can translate into real ones. Providing content on-line has long-term benefits including boosting your institutional reputation as a "go to" place both in the virtual and real world.
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Alan Goldstein
Interpretive Naturalist
Falls of The Ohio State Park Interpretive Center
Clarksville IN
Original Message:
Sent: 10-24-2015 08:56 AM
From: Sarah Reck
Subject: Examples of Virtual Visitor Offerings
Hi Heather,
Are you looking for ideas more robust than online collections and virtual tours? One of our initiatives has been to develop virtual video tours of our exhibits, and we're still working through the kinks but I think this is one way to get virtual visitors "in the door" so to speak.
But, like you, I'm curious to see if any else has done anything in this vein before!
Sarah
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Sarah Reck
Web & Social Media Content Manager
Senator John Heinz History Center
Pittsburgh PA