National Archives shifts direction with virtual exhibit of Winkworth collection

The National Archives of Canada has signalled a new direction for its online efforts in launching the new Peter Winkworth collection as a virtual exhibit. Rather than try to replicate a physical installation as some past projects have done, Archives officials are now using the web to gear collection sites toward both casual users and to hard-core researchers anxious to drill down into the available materials. When visitors first encounter the Winkworth collection online, they’ll see about 150 items presented in a traditional web site format. Those artworks, however, are just a tip of the iceberg as Archives staff digitize and post the majority of the 4,000-work collection through next year. Rather than present them all in the exhibit site, interested visitors will be able to search a database of items to find specific works. Changed thinking Irene Van Bavel, who works for the Archives’ online services arm, tells Canadian NEW MEDIA that the institution’s thinking has changed over the course of a few years about how to present material online. "When we started doing virtual exhibits about four, five years ago, we experimented with different types of products. Sometimes what we would do would be to take an actual physical exhibit and put it online. "Now, we’re moving away from that because we find that it doesn’t really work that well. Online, you can’t really create a physical exhibit because the experience is completely different." Van Bavel says that when visiting an exhibit in person, for example, people physically move through an arranged exhibit, something that doesn’t translate well on the web. "Why would you want to?" she asks. "What we are starting to do now is we are using our virtual exhibits as sort of an entry point into a collection." She notes that a similar approach was used with the diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King, which were recently digitized by partner Cold North Wind Inc. of Ottawa (CNM, March 6/03; May 1/02). There, too, only a fraction of the available material is presented on a top-level web site but researchers can find the full archives through an online search tool. The collection was acquired in April 2002 from Peter Winkworth, a Canadian-born but U.K.-dwelling collector of Canadiana, for $5.3 million. The price tag included money for digitization, funding for which didn’t require dipping into Canadian Heritage’s Canadian Culture Online Program. The special dispensation from Heritage included a proviso that the majority of the collection would be digitized within three years of the purchase and Archives staff already have approximately 700 items available in the database. Scanning was done at the Archives’ Gatineau QC site. The web site had a soft launch last October on the occasion of a visit by Winkworth to Canada. Another commitment that must be met by the Archives is to put an educational component for the site online. The current site, designed by Toronto-based Helios Design, is pared down and incorporates just a few graphics in a Flash environment to guide people through the collection. Additional content Besides the artworks, the site also features biographical information about Winkworth and information about the creators of the eighteenth and nineteenth century watercolours, drawings and prints. Besides the current content, a further educational component will be posted next year that will guide kids on a collection trip to a virtual antiques shop in the U.K. to teach them about collecting Canadiana. Archives officials also have plans for a travelling exhibit of the works in 2005. In future, says Van Bavel, the Archives will take a similar approach to other collections, digitizing the most commonly consulted groups of documents, and posting them in searchable form rather than as the online version of a physical exhibit.

National Archives shifts direction with virtual exhibit of Winkworth collection

Broadcast | February 20, 2004

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