Appendix I: Examples of digital and spatial storytelling across (and extending) GLAM spaces

The following list showcases examples of some of the digital shifts made by GLAMs over the past decade or two. Many of these techniques and technologies overlap, particularly through the increasing uptake of social media, including GLAM social media campaigns through Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok, among others.

Walking tours

Advancements in digital technologies, particularly spatial digital technologies, have led GLAMs to extend the concept, reach, and embodiment of cultural heritage through walking tours that rely on digital technology. Many of these rely on personal mobile devices like smartphones, which incorporate GPS, digital audio, cameras, and data or wifi capabilities that enable users to access GLAM-related information while moving throughout a designated route.

One example is Stones Kingston, led by members of Queen’s University Archives and the broader Kingston community, which offers a series of walking tours on alternative and often overlooked social histories of Kingston, which users can download with accompanying digital archival materials such as images and audio (or they can simply click on the map and learn about each location without physically walking the route). https://www.stoneskingston.ca/

Another walking tour example highlights the “uncomfortable” histories of Oxford. Uncomfortable Oxford, an academic-led organization, uses spatial digital technologies and research through GLAM and related academic institutions, to raise awareness about racial inequality, gender and class discrimination, and legacies of empire.

Virtual tours

Virtual tours have existed now for decades, with earlier examples using CD-ROM technology, but Web-based tours through personal devices have become particularly popular GLAM offerings with improvements to the quality and accessibility of digital technologies. The use of 360 cameras has enabled more immersive and spatially-aware experiences of galleries and museums, for example, and, like other digital engagement strategies, enable the sharing of stories and collections beyond their physical location.

For an example of virtual tours offered by museums, see the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History Virtual Tours page.

Ingenium, Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation, provides another example of using the virtual tour concept and extending it to offer “virtual field trips” to schools and summer camps.

Virtual and augmented reality

Some GLAMs, particularly galleries and museums, have increasingly turned to virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) to create more interactive, multidimensional experiences. Doing so requires specialized equipment for AR interactivity, either purchased and made available within GLAM spaces or, to a lesser extent given the high cost, relies on the relatively small number of individuals who have access to their own VR/AR technologies outside the cultural institutions. Whereas VR focuses entirely on objects constructed for strictly virtual environments, AR combines real and virtual object-worlds that incorporate image- and location-based technologies, such as 3-D mobile cameras and global positioning systems (GPS), which combine to achieve an “augmented” reality experience.

To commemorate the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death in France, the Louvre Museum developed its first VR experience using da Vinci’s Mona Lisa oil painting as its focus. To make the VR more accessible to people unable to visit the museum and use the VR eyewear, the museum also developed an app, described as follows: “Mona Lisa: Beyond the Glass reveals the latest scientific research on da Vinci’s artistic innovation and his painting techniques and processes through exceptional visualization in 360 degree panorama and cardboard, bringing them to life.” To read more about the project, visit the project website and accompanying YouTube video.

The artistic possibilities of VR and AR raise new questions about representation through digital art and technology. As Maite Labat (Head of Digital and Audiovisual Productions at The Louvre) reflected on one consideration: “Should we represent her as a painting? Should we represent her as a living woman?” Although not explicitly discussed in The Louvre’s public description of the project, digital humanities scholars would also consider the ethics of re-animating artifacts, and people, from the past.

Podcasting and Digital Audio Productions

GLAMs have increasingly turned to podcasting as a method of storytelling that draws on and extends the knowledge held through their spaces. Podcasts, which are typically a series of digital audio productions involving one or more narrators along with other auditory media, are creative methods of knowledge mobilization that are also included in the “toolkits” of digital humanities scholars. Although podcasts can stand alone, they are often used by museums and libraries as opportunities to provide more in-depth context about particular materials or topics, and the narratives told through podcasts often draw on research using GLAM-based collections.

Examples of GLAM-led podcasts include:

• Ingenium Channel (Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation)- a hub of curated digital audio content related to science, technology, and innovation:

https://ingeniumcanada.org/channel/browse/media/podcast

• The British Museum Podcast: https://britishmuseum.libsyn.com/

Digital humanities scholars are also turning to podcasts, using podcasting as a means of both doing and disseminating research. In many cases, podcasts also become important spaces for thinking through or hosting key debates on complex topics across the digital and spatial humanities. Examples of scholarly podcasts abound; below are just a few examples of digital history and geography podcasts:

• History Slam via Active History (hosted by Sean Graham): http://activehistory.ca/podcasts/
• For a roundtable discussion featuring historians who use podcasting as part of their research design, see History Slam episode 197: History Podcaster Roundtable (De. 16, 2021): http://activehistory.ca/2021/12/historyslam197/

• Geographical Imaginations: Radio Expeditions into the Geographies of Everything & Nothing

https://www.geographicalimaginations.org/about/

• Antipod: A Radical Geography Podcast and Sound Collective

https://antipodeonline.org/2020/02/19/antipod-a-radical-geography-podcast-and-sound-collective/

Live-streaming

For GLAMs that include collections and items related to environmental knowledges (e.g., plants, lake dynamics, animals), online live-streaming has become a way to create a more immediate experience or “front-row seat.” The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, for example, provides access to a series of “Bird Cams” on their website, which includes a look inside the nests of endangered or at-risk birds, and document the conservation efforts to protect them.

GIS-based Digital History and Storytelling Projects

We discuss several historical GIS (HGIS) projects in module 5 and throughout the course. Here are two more examples of projects that combine knowledges from GLAM collections, academic research, and spatial analysis through GIS:

• • “Mapping May 4,” a project based out of Kent University, is an interactive map of audio stories surrounding the events of May 4, 1970 (known as the Kent State shootings or the Kent State massacre, which culminated in the shooting deaths of four Kent State students by officers of the National Guard).

• • “Documenting Slave Voyages” is a multi-source geospatial and historical dataset of trans-Atlantic slave voyages from a multi-disciplinary team of “historians, librarians, curriculum specialists, cartographers, computer programmers, and web designers, in consultation with scholars of the slave trade from universities in Europe, Africa, South America, and North America.” (Slavevoyages.org). More information about the project, which based at Emory University and Rice University, can be found at this news story.