One of them, posted by the Mackenzie House in Toronto, was a source that hadn’t even been seen by a curator and conservationist who previously catalogued and researched clothing by Monsieur Dave. Here he is, posing with a group of women wearing the same clothing they had been researching.

I haven’t a clue what reason the Mackenzie House had for following our project, or how it knew about this source, but anecdotally that exchange is great example of the kinds ways a project can benefit from going public before it’s finished. The kind of interaction invited by a work-in-progress is very different from the sort you get from a finished project. Even setting aside practicalities — crowdsourcing ideas and sources, soliciting constructive criticism, etc. — I think there’s a case to be made about how doing in history in the open can become an opportunity for creating engagement. Unfinished projects can become invitations for online interaction and collaboration. In this example, my research problem became someone else’s prompt to do a little digging of their own, with fruitful results for all parties.

I don’t want to suggest that our own project was groundbreaking in this respect, but I do think it’s a strong example of the way heritage organizations could also “do history in the open.” For us, online engagement was largely limited to Wordpress and Twitter. These kinds of interaction could also be fostered on a museum’s website, Facebook page or custom mobile app. One imagines an institution like Science and Tech with an established online presence could do a lot more than a class of nine students.

Aside from fostering certain kinds of engagement, I can think of another important reason why institutions like Science and Tech should be making efforts to do digital history in the open. The artifact that triggered my exchange with Mackenzie House was a uniform that was worn by a hostess at the Air Canada Pavilion at Expo 67 — Monsieur Dave was the designer. You’ve encountered the uniform before. Remember our visit to the Science and Technology Museum’s storage facility at the beginning of this presentation? You leaned in for a closer look, and were startled to see a woman in a cream-coloured dress. The discomfort I tried to capture with that opening account was the result of you — a member of the public — being in a space never intended for public use.

Here she is again. Recall that only 10% of the museum’s collection is ever on display at any one time. Every one of those objects represents an opportunity for generating public interest, a means of gathering insights, memories, or stories.



I don’t want to suggest for a moment that the museum isn’t using its collection adequately. The work that happens in that space is essential. Museum researchers and conservationists are actively working to preserve and expand the historical knowledge embedded in their material collection. There’s a reason that warehouse isn’t public. The physical artifact demands such attention. It’s physicality is what makes it special. In the storage facility, the physicality of the artifact makes it an important source for historical research. In the exhibition hall, it enables the experience of a authentic encounter with the past.

The digital object demands a different kind of attention. Appearing on our screens rather than in the display case, a 3D replica might reasonably be seen as less “authentic” than the physical artifact on which it’s based. By the same token, however, it doesn’t have the same limitations. The digital object can be seen by multiple viewers, in multiple locations, at the same time. It can be shared, passed around social networks, and engage audiences that might never see it in person. The digital artifact brings limitations of its own, but also exciting new possibilities.

Going digital doesn’t mean that we can or should dispose of the material object, as so many libraries are doing today. Rather than see the digital artifact as either replacing or corrupting the physical object, heritage professionals should appreciate it within the context of certain unavoidable constraints. Materiality is the defining feature of the artifact and simultaneously its greatest limitation. In the process of translation from material to digital, the object exchanges one set of limitations for another, allowing it to do an altogether different kind of work.

Of course, I don’t want to give you the impression that going digital is a quick and easy process. I have a dozen bungled models that suggest the very opposite. But this is the wonderful thing about digital work. As I have tried to explain, those inevitable shortcomings and failures are also opportunities to create online engagement, and they engage people differently than a polished model ever could.

Doing digital history won’t replace the museum or the historic site. It was never meant to. It “augments” the work of existing heritage institutions, directing their work in interesting new directions, exposing them to new audiences. In our own work, artifacts currently held in museum storage facilities due to spatial and conservation constraints have acquired new lives online. Far from detracting from the value of the physical artifact, such innovations challenge us to consider them in new ways.

Take a second look at our hostess. She made us startle when we encountered her in the storage facility. How should we react now that she’s on a screen?

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