HIS6942 – Week One: An Introduction

Over the course of 2025 Summer Term C (roughly mid-May through early August) I am working with the Brevard Veterans Memorial Center as a summer internship for credit toward my coursework in UCF’s Texts & Technology PhD program.

My research interests include practices of public history, particularly ways in which small, local institutions can leverage technology and emerging practices to punch above their weight class, telling stories that are impactful and memorable in dynamic ways that engage visitors.

With prior experience working on an IMLS funded inventorying project in a major museum’s collections, I understand that museums always have more artifacts to share than we do space, place, and means to share them. This means that, many times, people do not get to see the neat things that are in our collections. Things may just sit in storage, rarely if ever seen by the public. This fear of not being able to share all of the objects can, sometimes, create a pressure to fill display cases to the gills.

I love a museum display stuffed full of interesting objects, but it can sometimes be hard to see the forest for the trees and yet other times it is somehow hard to find a tree in the forest. In a display case with perhaps too many objects, interpretation and contextualization suffers.

I think I can help combat this – I firmly believe that through modern technological practices, like various methods of 3d scanning, museums can share their hidden artifacts from their collections more widely and the ease of modern websites (like this one) allows content to be added and changed. We can produce 3d models of things in our collection and share them online. We can also easily add links, like QR codes, to our display cases to squeeze a bit of that interpretation that might not fit on walls that are packed and cases that are filled.

Over the course of this term, I’m going to work with folks at the BVMC to identify important objects from their impressive collection to 3d scan. I’ll create shareable digital twins of these objects. With the help of an undergraduate student, we’ll also produce interpretive and contextualizing text to accompany them on an easy to access web presence.

Here’s an example of an artifact from my time at the South Carolina State Museum.

Through the course of the internship, I hope to gain several things. First, is simply more experience working in and around another museum. Hopefully this will let me take in and experience firsthand how yet another institution functions.

I also hope to hone my process for 3d scanning objects. I am very comfortable with basic photogrammetric processes, but hope to bolster my skills with this. You’ll notice the model above has a few holes in it. I’d love to get better and more proficient with the various software involved to learn how to smooth and fill. However, there are other objects in the museum’s collection that simply don’t lend themselves well to photogrammetry. I hope to gain some working familiarity with other methods of 3d scanning, like structured light and laser scanning.

I hope to hone my process, particularly of photogrammetry, which has a low cost of entry from an equipment standpoint, and develop a workflow where I can teach community partners, like the BVMC, to do this sort of work themselves. It looks intimidating and produces great results, but it is actually relatively straightforward. It can be done using equipment most of us already have (our cellphones and laptops). A motivated and savvy enough volunteer can be taught to do this process – it does not have to be something that only happens when a T&T student shows up.