What does a museum do when its main attraction is off limits?
The B.C. Museum of Mining faces that challenge, but a high-tech solution is about to change all that.
The museum in Britannia announced this week it was granted $95,000 from the Virtual Museums of Canada, a program funded by the federal government.
A virtual exhibit about the historic mill is going to be created. The tour will be accessible by anyone with internet access and the software to view the tour.
"It is going to give us international coverage and it is really going to open the doors to the museum to the whole world," said Farrah Rooney, the museum curator. "It is very important as well to accessibility. Right now most of the concentrator is inaccessible just for safety reasons. In fact, even as the Britannia Project moves forward chances are all of the concentrator will never be fully accessible."
She said the plan is to open up most of it but not all of it once the building goes through a major overhaul.
The virtual tour will show people how the good ore was separated from the bad rock.
Rooney said this new tool for the museum will be of significant value to teachers as an educational tool. Teachers are being contacted to give feedback on what is needed to make it useful for educational purposes.
"This will be probably the definitive online site to be able to do research about how the concentrating process works as well as in context of the larger mining process," Rooney said. "It is quite groundbreaking."
Rooney is creating the script and doing research. A company called Zero One Design will help with the design work and gathering the three dimensional footage from each of the eight levels in the concentrator building.
The footage will include almost ever nook and cranny, said Rooney.
The object is to present the mill in an entertaining and educational way. One of the ways to bring entertainment to the virtual tour site is through the inclusion of a video game that is currently being developed.
The first rough draft of the virtual tour is expected to be ready by early next year and Rooney said the goal is to launch the initiative on the internet in July of next [email protected]
