Jonny Grass Blog 6, Charlotte, the Vermont Whale

Charlotte, the Vermont Whale

Charlotte, the Vermont Whale is listed as an electronic museum on the icom site of virtual museums, though its digital collection is not well curated. It was created in 1993 by the Computing and Information Technology department at the University of Vermont to highlight the 1849 discovery of a fossilized beluga whale near Charlotte, VT.  The site contains an “Introduction to the Story,” a “Directory of Exhibits,” and an “About the Project” page.  Due to curtailed funding, the site remains incomplete.

Collection Principles:

The virtual museum is based on the fossil of a whale that is housed in Burlington, presumably at an institution affiliated with University of Vermont.  While it is not clear where the fossil is housed, the site was founded and managed by UVM, so it is likely that this is where the physical object is located.  It is not clear how the photographs that were used for the digital images were selected; the site is derived from a slideshow the curator, Jeff Howe, compiled for a traveling presentation.  However, it is not clear that the digital images were part of his slideshow, or why he chose these images in the first place.

Object Characteristics

Within the exhibit directory, an image is displayed with one or two sentences.  The description usually includes at least one term with a hypertext link to a page explaining that term, also with an image and a couple sentences.  Presumably the exhibit is this one image, plus the single images on linked pages.  The images on some of the pages are clickable in order to open better resolution images in another window.  These new images are roughly 600 pixels x 200-400 pixels.

Metadata

There is little metadata for the images.   The rights information is provided, but that is it.  The site is descriptive about the events surrounding the finding of the fossil, as well as relevant subjects, such as beluga whale.  However, descriptive metadata about the images or the fossils doesn’t seem to be available.

Intended Audience

The intended audience is school children, though the site does not state what age this means.  It seems like it is geared toward younger elementary school kids; the site was constructed to supplement traveling presentations by its curator to Vermont schools to tell children about the fossil.