Monmouth Plans Virtual Museum with Broadband Funds

Published: January 15, 2013
Related to: West Central eTeam

Monmouth — The city of Monmouth is moving forward with design plans for a virtual museum, thanks to the Illinois Broadband Innovation Fund.

According to the Daily Review Atlas, Monmouth has received its $10,000 state grant aimed to promote technology and history in the Monmouth community - the birthplace of legendary lawman Wyatt Earp.

The project is one of 14 Illinois Broadband Innovation Fund awardees announced last fall by the Partnership for a Connected Illinois, a nonprofit agency based in Springfield.

The program will divvy out $500,000 to private, public and nonprofit organizations that submitted creative plans to increase computer usage and internet adoption across the state.

The virtual museum project will cost $26,000, with additional money coming from donations, the newspaper reports.

City officials in Monmouth say they are working with a database expert from the University of Iowa to implement the program.

"We are ramping this up because we have college seniors from Monmouth College to help us with this upcoming project,"  Monmouth director of community development Paul Schuytema told the Daily Review Atlas.

The computer science department and senior database research students have agreed to help expand the museum project.

"It's kind of cool when technology lets us do our job better," Schuytema said.
One idea that has been discussed is a mobile phone application that would allow smartphone users to learn about buildings on a "then-and-now" tour while traveling around Monmouth, the newspaper reports.

The technology of geocoding would enable the phone to detect the location and pull up a historical photo of a nearby building or site.

The city hopes to make the virtual museum user-friendly while learning facts about Monmouth's history.

Over the course of the project, computers, a flatbed scanner and high-speed Internet will be installed at the Warren County Historical Society Museum.

Monmouth College students are working to create an exhibition at the Buchanan Center that will be one of the virtual museum's inaugural exhibits, according to the Review Atlas. The broadband grant also provides training high school students in the area to create their own virtual exhibit, based on local Journey Stories from the Smithsonian exhibition.

Read the full story online at http://www.reviewatlas.com/news/x1781254138/City-making-progress-on-virtual-museum-project