Themes
Introduce and/or Supplement Online Interpretation
Interpretation is the critical tool for helping people understand, forge a connection with, and care about a landscape’s inherent natural and cultural assets. Online interpretation includes written descriptions of people and events, video tours of sites, oral histories, connection to other resources, and more. In addition, on-site interpretive markers with QR codes would allow visitors easy access to online information via handheld devices.
The Alcatraz website, for example, provides a wealth of information about the island’s history and the nineteen-month-long occupation by Native Americans beginning in late 1969. Similarly, the Los Angeles Conservancy hosts a great body of information about Ruben Salazar Park and associated sites along the 3.7-mile-long National Chicano Moratorium route; and the Conservancy’s National Register of Historic Places nomination for the protest route that led to its designation as a Historic District is superb, thorough, and engrossing – a model for others to follow. The 1968 protests at Chicago’s Grant Park and 1924-25 protests at Fisk University would benefit from more online and on-site interpretation.
Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee. Photo courtesy Fisk University.
Among the most valuable online interpretative tools are oral histories, preferably in video. These first-person accounts and narratives not only provide a unique personal connection to events, they also serve as valuable primary source material for researchers and scholars.