Since the GPS-enabled history and website and mobile app, Clio (theclio.com) was created in 2017 by Marshall University associate professor of history, David Trowbridge, it has uploaded and curated 35,226 historical entries helping people in every state discover history through walking, driving and virtual multi-media tours.
Named after the Greek muse of history, Clio was – before Covid 19 – already providing a free, vital tool in helping people use the technology in their hand to get a kinetic contact to art and history through audio, videos, and text through uploaded walking and driving tours. Clio’s content is crafted by universities, libraries, local historical societies, tourism organizations, preservation groups, museums and local historians who create individual entries as well as complete walking and driving tours.
With many museums and historical attractions closed for tours, The Clio has ramped up its efforts to help connect people to historical and culturally significant sites.
“We released a new feature in Clio that makes it possible for museums and historical/cultural sites to create a virtual tour,” said Trowbridge, who is also the director of Marshall’s African and African American Studies. “So now, you can move through the Huntington Museum of Art or Heritage Farm and listen to Geoffrey Fleming (at the museum) or Audy Perry (at Heritage Farm) and other staff as they describe their galleries, buildings, and collections as you see 360-degree images of each space along with text, images, and links to learn more.”
The father of young children, Trowbridge said although he had been to Heritage Farm dozens of times, getting to hear about exhibits through video and audio stories told by Audy Perry, executive director of the Heritage Farm Foundation, took the experience to a new level. And the idea – in these re-structured days of Covid-19 – is to pique people’s interest in attractions so that once it is safe to reopen museums to the public, that they will want to travel to come, learn and explore more.
“This is designed to get people hooked and to give people an appreciation for what is there and it is just more fun,” Trowbridge said. “You hear Audy’s voice on the tour of Heritage Farm, and the blacksmiths and his daughter Rebekah, and they telling these stories and Audy’s mom Henriella is telling you about the love and pride in her family and in the culture … and by the time you have made it halfway through you kind of know the family and want to go visit them at the Farm.”
THE HERITAGE FARM TOUR
https://theclio.com/entry/25771
Build it For Free on Clio And They Will Explore
Since Clio is free thanks to support by the National Endowment for the Humanities, it is available to tens of thousands of museums and sites at no cost. “There are virtual museum tours popping up all over the country and it’s all because of what we are building in West Virginia,” Trowbridge said.
In fact in the past 30 days, there have been 1,100 new improvements to the site and 823 new entries. When Trowbridge hosted a webinar recently to help historians and museums around the country create their own tours through Clio. He thought maybe 20 or 30 people would sign up but more than 400 did, and he is helping those entities load up fresh content to the website daily.
“Using this system, you can move through a museum, cultural site, historic site, state park, or even a nature trail complete with audio, text, 360-degree images, and links. The tours work from any location, and over 150 museums and historic sites signed up to use it in the first week of this being available. At least a dozen have already created virtual tours,” Trowbridge said.
From Cranberry Glades to Crater Lake, biologists and botanists have also been utilizing Clio to help folks explore the bounty of the outdoors. “There’s also a natural trail for Cranberry with narration by a science teacher and the park naturalist. And since you can download the tours, you can use Clio to find the trailhead even though there is no cell service at Cranberry. This could be very helpful for backpackers — we use your phone’s GPS and show the last stop on the tour, where you need to go, and where you are with or without cell service,” Trowbridge said of the Cranberry Glades Botanical Area Tour, which includes 11 stops of interest.
“If you download it when you had a signal you could use it offline without a cell phone so people can not only find the trailhead but also learn about the human and natural history and the flora and fauna,” Trowbridge said. “I think people will like it for navigation and it’s kind of neat to hear some of the history of West Virginia as you are taking the dog for a hike.”
CRANBERRY GLADES BOTANICAL AREA TOUR
https://theclio.com/entry/84925
A Post Covid World of Museum Exploration
Trowbridge said Clio is poised for some incredible growth Clio can deliver amazing, interactive content without requiring patrons to touch anything.
“This is a significant expansion of our mission in response to COVID-19 aimed at helping museums and historical sites while they are closed. The feedback from early adopters is that what we created here in West Virginia is objectively better than what is being offered by Silicon Valley companies. The tours are designed to also work in person, and with a new version of the app is coming out this week.”
“Museums are worried about things they’ve handed out in the past like headphones and in-gallery tech like digital kiosks being unsustainable in a post-COVID world, so Clio makes it possible to have all the same features on someone’s own device. We’re also releasing accessibility features thanks to our partnership with the American Foundation for the Blind.”
With a couple grant proposals out, Trowbridge looks for Clio to help solve some of the problems for heritage tourism offices worried about what lies ahead and what to do now. He feels like the build out of virtual tours could give tourism and museum officials a practical and inexpensive way to build content and interest in their collections and to better tell more of their unique stories. “I’ve visited these museums many times in person, but in some ways, the virtual tour was the best visit because I learned the backstory behind collections and items in their museums.”
For more information about Clio, visit www.theclio.com or download the Clio app on mobile devices via the App Store or Google Play. Trowbridge can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].
