Inside Out and Online: the Use of Digital Media to Share Multiple Perspectives of Historic Costume
Abstract: "Digital media, including social media, play an increasingly important role in historic costume collections. However, most digital costume collections up to now have followed the model of museums and libraries working with two-dimensional objects, showing at most only a handful of formal views of the object, often only of the front. In my work with the Vassar College Costume Collection, I have been exploring alternative models for sharing costume online, including blogging, to share more of the attributes specific to complex three-dimensional objects like costume. Two such projects can be seen at http://blogs.vassar.edu/hcpw/ and http://tryingonhistory.blogspot.com/, both of which use student-produced photos and video to share many details of interior construction that are not commonly seen in standard collection databases. All such media related to the collection is also being archived at http://vcomeka.com/vccc/. This work has been guided by a concept I call “multiplicity,” in service of goals related to the multiple needs of our diverse audience: Multiple views can be provided by photographs or video that show objects inside and out, and all around. Video is particularly effective both at capturing the physicality of the garment and the enthusiasm of the researcher. QuickTime Virtual Reality (QTVR) images stitch multiple high resolution photographs together into a single animation of a mounted costume that can be “rotated” 360 degrees, and zoomed in upon, when the viewer drags his/her mouse over it. Multiple narratives about the objects, involving not only curators’ research but also student work and viewer comments and questions, enrich the understanding of the object, so that it can invoke a conversation rather than a monologue. Multiple levels of supporting information, such as citations and links to other related resources (both within the site and from other institutions), take advantage of available research to better tell the story of the object. Multiple layers of experience are provided by digital access to costume, even though it cannot replace physical experience. Process oriented web resources that include videos of researchers handling and discussing the objects, such as the blogs I have worked on, can model behavior for, and inspire a desire to seek out, future opportunities to view and work with real objects."
