Over the last two years I’ve grown increasingly interested in how online organizations can bridge the divide between the Internet and the physical world we live in. My background in underwater archaeology and history blended well with my interest in digital museums as a tool for teaching the public, hence the Museum of Underwater Archaeology (the MUA is an online only organization). The material culture side of me, however, feels constrained by a web only format and has sought ways to reach out to the actual classrooms and communities we wish to engage.

To that end the MUA created teaching kits to send to schools around the world, visited college campuses and field projects to interview its contributing writers, and is working toward becoming a “distributed” museum where our physical exhibits would exists in small bricks and mortar museums around the world rather than in one centralized facility. The kits not only teach students about underwater archaeology but they also integrate the website’s content by mining the posted entries both old and new as case studies. The graduate student interviews conducted onsite became part of the student’s posts as well as a tool for evaluating the site’s effectiveness. The physical exhibits will be the most involved effort undertaken by this organization. Working with local institutions we wish to create both the physical and web versions of an exhibit in an effort to make the information as widely accessible as possible.

I think there are links here with some of the concepts others have mentioned in their blogs including Mills Kelly’s May 20^th post on “how we can get digital humanities off the desktop and out into the community.” I’d very much like to hear how others are making those connections.