Googling the Museum via the Google Art Project

“Can you imagine using Google Street View to walk through the museum?” That question from Noel Poirier began my involvement in the Google Cultural Institute project at the National Watch and Clock Museum. Noel, the museum’s director, explained that Google will create a virtual walk-through of the museum using the same technology as Street View. The first requirement, however, was the creation of an online gallery of objects from the museum’s collection. Being both excited by the audience and exposure that Google brings, and proud of the museum for being chosen to participate, I volunteered to work on this project.

The Google Art Project brings together hundreds of collections.

The work involved selecting objects for the online gallery and then entering information about them on the Google site. The basic information about each object was found using the museum’s online catalog Search.  This was simply a cut and paste job for such items as the date of the object, where it was made, its maker, and so on. Describing the object was the most difficult and time consuming. Starting with the museum catalog description, I wanted to make mine shorter and to eliminate most technical information such as number of jewels, type of escapement, etc.  A link from the Google site allows the visitor to access the museum catalog entry if they want more information. And that’s what I am hoping they will do; it just might keep them exploring our website. I had fun using the random image button on the search site and chose several objects that are not currently on exhibit in the museum.

The "back-end" of the project that allows entry of objects.

The project is very exciting and multifaceted. Already, there are new tools Google wants to try out and a need to re-photograph some of the objects.  I hope to continue working on this project; I’ll try to keep you posted on its progress.

Al Dodson

Museum Volunteer & NAWCC Workshop Instructor