Martha, America's last carrier pigeon, is among artifacts in a "virtual museum" created by Mississippi State University and the Smithsonian Institution for display at an international conference.
Titled "Museums and the Web," the March 16-19 Los Angeles conference is sponsored by the Getty Information Institute. Presentations and demonstrations are planned by such major repositories as the Peabody Museum at Harvard, the University of Glasgow, the Western Australian Maritime Museum, Sweden's National Museum of Natural History, and the Washington, D.C.-based Smithsonian.
"The Getty is one of the leading private museums in the country and this is one of the first major international conferences of this type," said Charles Calvo of Mississippi State's School of Architecture. Calvo is the school's research director and head of the Digital Research and Imaging Laboratory, an arm of the graduate degree program in visualization.
Last year, the lab created an Internet site of artifacts for the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Called "Digital Darwins," it is the first known three-dimensional natural history World Wide Web site. Lab researchers worked with the Smithsonian's Biovisualization Laboratory to develop 3-D and quick-time virtual reality formats of artifacts.
Martha's stuffed body is among the newest museum artifacts added to the web site. Carrier pigeons were hunted to extinction in the first part of this century.
The web site can be accessed at http://www.digitaldarwins.sarc.msstate.edu.
"This project envisions the use of technology to allow students, regardless of where they are, to interact with museum objects and to interest them in science," Calvo said. Objects can be manipulated in three dimensions and viewed from a number of angles, he explained.
Mississippi State's Digital Research and Imaging Lab is developing virtual displays of other Smithsonian artifacts ranging from the Hope Diamond to fossil teeth.
"We're trying to select items with broad appeal to test the electronic capabilities," Calvo said.
Also, the lab is cooperating with the university's electrical and computer engineering department to test the use of artificial intelligence to identify anthropological specimens.
"We want this project to serve as a national model for science, technology and natural history education enhancement," Calvo said. "We see this as a way to provide access to museum collections and to discovery-based learning for students, especially in rural areas like Mississippi.
"The 'Museums and the Web' conference is a way to highlight the leadership role Mississippi is taking in this national effort," he said.