I am having trouble creating parameters for my final project.  At present, my advisor and I plan for my Dissertation to concern 19^th century Consumerism in the U.S., although I will have to narrow the topic down much more than that—perhaps to a certain city or state, or to the lead-up to the Civil War (I would cover 1820-1861), or to a certain subtopic such as Women’s History, or the history of a department store such as Macy’s or a history of mail-order buying from catalogues such as the Sears-Roebuck catalogue.  Initial research has shown that most topics on Consumerism in the U.S. benefit from having a background knowledge of Consumerism in the UK, so I do not know at present if my Dissertation or website will consider one or both countries.  So there are still quite a few variables for my Dissertation.  Yet there are fewer variables for my Final Project for this class—I have been putting a lot of thought into the exact parameters of my Virtual Museum.

Due to the format of our final project (design for a website), I feel the online medium is best suited to some sort of virtual museum of Consumerism—I really feel that this museum necessarily needs to exist in the online medium, and I aim for it to be a “born digital” project.  I would like to justify the use of a website by using it to accomplish something that could not be accomplished otherwise—so in the case of a virtual museum, I will be able to transcend geographic and temporal boundaries and display items that could never physically be displayed next to each other.  I could also present items that are too fragile to be on display in a physical museum, or even items of which we have images but the items themselves have been lost or are currently being repaired.  I would want to offer visitors to my site the opportunity to see objects grouped thematically and/or chronologically—so I could build virtual rooms, each with objects from a common theme, or I could build an interactive timeline, and visitors could click on different sections of the timeline in order to see objects from that time period.  Visitors would be able to look much more closely at objects than in real life, where museum vitrines and guards prevent this, and users would have the option to rotate the object in 3-D to examine all facets of it.  Visitors would also be able to linger in front of one object as long as they liked, without having to worry about crowds or about being moved ahead by museum guards.  Users could also visit the virtual museum at any time of day, regardless of their time zone or physical location at different places on the globe.  Visitors could also build their own rooms in the galleries according to their own search terms, themes, or aesthetic criteria.  In these ways and others, I hope to show that my virtual museum provides experiences which are not possible in a physical museum building, and therefore my choice of the website medium is not gratuitous to the project but is absolutely necessary.

Here are what I have deemed to be the most important questions at this point, as regards my virtual museum of Consumerism:

[any comments are gratefully appreciated]

How many objects should I include?

What types of objects?  Should I limit myself to certain types of artifacts, such as Women’s Clothing or Shoes, Home Furnishings, China and Silverware, Children’s Toys including Dollhouses?  Textiles, teapots, snuff boxes, parasols and accessories?  Or should I limit myself thematically, focusing on certain Women’s items or certain Children’s items?  Should I limit it to items produced in the country or include imported goods too—such as the Victorian trend for Chinoiserie and other goods from Asia?

Should I cover both the US and the UK?  Should I focus on certain towns or cities, such as New York versus London?

Should I cover the entire 19^th century or just the Victorian period (1837-1901)?  Is the appellation “Victorian” even appropriate for a study of America?

***Is anyone else doing a Virtual Museum and how are you going about your project and its goals?  What are your temporal and geographical limitations?  How do you compare and contrast your site to others available on similar topics?  As regards genre, are you considering it as a Research Tool with primary and secondary sources, or is it primarily a Museum, with images of objects and useful captions, and links to provide additional information, if the user wishes?

I look forward to seeing everyone in class!

Holly

P.S.  There is such an abundance of incredible information online!  I am excited and overwhelmed!  Here are 2 of the 1,000s of Consumer Goods that I have been browsing through recently, it turns out there are incredibly detailed collections on such interesting themes as Dollhouses, as well as on more expected themes such as Glassware:

Dollhouse, London, 1870

Chandelier, London, 1865