Jenna Crowe

Staff Writer

The Idaho Museum of Natural History at ISU plays a pivotal role in education by being one of the first museums in America to have a 3-D virtual museum.

This is exciting for Leif Tapanila, an associate professor of geosciences and the director of the museum, because it opens new doors for everyone.

“[This has] the ability now to give accessibility, for education, for the public just to enjoy it or our researchers to take it and make knowledge out of it,” Tapanila said.

Corey Schou, an informatics and computers science professor and the director of the Informatics Research Institute is the second driving force behind the project.

The Virtual Idaho Project, as titled by Tapanila, is a groundbreaking use of 3-D technology to make museum artifacts available to the general public without having to pay a fee. This project started in the early 2000s when laser scanners were created and its main goal is to make museum artifacts across Idaho available to all.

“The advantage is you’re not tied to the place that a unique object is stuck in,” Tapanila said. “In a museum, you aren’t able to pick up an artifact, but with our 3-D models you can move it any direction you want.”

The completion of this project will affect how artifacts are used in the classroom, and the process has not been without its obstacles.

One of the largest obstacles was the amount of data that was in each model. The amount of time it would take to load a full-detail model would leave people online waiting for far too long.

The solution was to cut the detail and resolution by approximately 90 percent, then overlay an image. The result was indistinguishable from the original, and just as accurate with measurements.

“One of the hurdles we ran into was when we were asked ‘Well, can you take measurements with it?’,” Schou said. “Our answer was yes.”

Colleagues wanted to know if the digital models would allow for accurate measurements to be taken. Staff scanned an artifact given to them, and asked colleagues in Canada to compare it by measuring the actual artifact. No significant differences could be found.

Most of the hurdles involved the complex technology that was being used. “We have to have humans that know how to make this technology work,” Tapanila said.

By using students from the Career Path Internship program, as well as the recent addition of high school interns, Schou’s team in charge of the database procedure and Tapanila’s team that created the 3-D models are able to work together to create a successful Idaho Virtual Museum.

This project has received funding from the MJ Murdock Charitable Trust as well as the Hitz Foundation. These groups provide major financial support for the Virtual Idaho Project for the past three years.

“Both groups are very forward thinking,” Schou said.

The next step will be to move forward with a 3-D clothing collection and starting by collaborating with a museum in Boise.

“The Virtual Idaho Project is an economic engine,” Tapanila said. “It’s like a big ad for museums.”

Both Schou and Tapanila are hopeful that within the next decade the Virtual Idaho Project will have a virtual map of the entire state and artifacts in their areas of origin will be completed.

The Idaho Museum of Natural History is the first in the country to seriously commit to the idea of a fully virtual museum.

The only other museum that Schou and Tapanila knew of that was working on it was the Smithsonian, which actually sent artifacts to their group to have them scanned.