Lewis & Clark: The National Bicentennial Exhibition
Dan Zlatic, Missouri Historical Society, USA
http://www.lewisandclarkexhibit.org

Demonstration: Demonstrations - Session 2

Two hundred years after Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set out from St. Louis on their transcontinental journey of exploration, a major multi-city museum exhibition and a virtual experience will commemorate their adventure.

The Missouri Historical Society staff, along with developers from Terra Incognita will demonstrate the site, as well as discuss the approach that was taken to meet the goals of the exhibit. The site, which was developed by Terra Incognita, serves several purposes, including:

*An information supplement to the physical exhibit

*A marketing tool to promote the exhibit

*An educational component with 14 units of curriculum focusing on one of nine thematic areas—Preparing for the Trip, Politics & Diplomacy, Mapping, Women, Animals, Language, Warriors/ Soldiers, Trade & Property, and Plants

*A virtual experience that contains video clips, audio explanations of several concepts, a tool to closely examine artifacts from the expedition, and Flash driven interactive features.

This presentation will chronicle the development process for meeting these and other goals, as well as serve as a showcase of the completed Web site component of this exciting exhibition. Several of the Web site’s innovative features will be profiled, including the approach taken to let users examine in detail artifacts from the 1804 expedition, the extensive curriculum, and a virtual component with several interactive experiences (to be released in Mid-January, 2004) that help users better understand some of the interesting aspects of Lewis and Clark’s expedition.