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Website review Jessica Lacher-Feldman Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 Online Interactive Exhibit http://www.mdch.org/fire/ What better way to commemorate an historical event for the broadest possible audience than to create an interactive web exhibition that brings together a host of information, interesting and well-researched images and descriptions, a smooth and attractive interface, and a medium for cultural heritage collaboration and the uniting of disparate archival sources? The Maryland Cultural Digital Heritage Project has done just that with their recently unveiled online exhibition, The Great Baltimore Fire of 1904, available on the MDCH site at www.mdch.org/fire/ One hundred years ago, in February of 1904, a large section of Baltimore’s business district was burned to the ground. This tragic event brought firefighters from several other cities including New York and Philadelphia, and destroyed over 1,500 buildings across 70 city blocks, closing 2,500 businesses and leaving 35,000 employees without work. Despite the wide-spread destruction, miraculously, only one death was directly attributed to the fire. The Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 online exhibit brilliantly illustrates this historic tragedy by juxtaposing historical and contemporary photographs, and by providing the user both context and content. It offers users a sense of Baltimore before the fire, the destruction that followed, as well as the Baltimore we know today. The exhibit features an image of a historical map which allows the user to step through the phases of the fire, further emphasized by an image of a progressively burning wooden match whichusers can click on to step through the phases. Users can view accompanying film clips and images featured, accessible by clicking on corresponding spots on the maps. The historical map image was provided by the Perry-Castaneda Library at the University of Texas-Austin, and the overlaying graphics show just how the fire spread through Baltimore. An additional feature which does an excellent job to tie our historic past to the all-too-important present is to illustrate ‘Baltimore Today’ with a satellite image of Baltimore provided courtesy of Space Imaging [www.spaceimaging.com/]. Besides its well-executed design and easy navigability, clear and concise narrative, and broad audience appeal, the site was designed in such a way that users do not need to download any plugins, nor are they hobbled greatly by using a dialup connection or an older browser version. Further consideration was made by creating an attractive and properly configured print version of the site, something often overlooked when designing an online exhibition. The creators’ attention to the end user and their needs is readily apparent in the site. The site was developed by Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage Project [mdch.org], a state-wide digital program housed physically at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland. It is part of a larger digitization effort that brings together disparate collections and provides opportunities for broad-based collaboration. Images and film were contributed to the Great Baltimore Fire exhibit by The Enoch Pratt Free Library, the Fire Museum of Maryland, the Maryland Historical Society, Library of Congress and the Baltimore County Public Library, as well as UT-Austin and Space Imaging. The exhibition is not only an excellent commemorative display, but is a model for cultural resource collaboration among repositories of varying sizes, missions, and holdings. |
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