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closeHarbor History Museum wins national audio tour contest
Museum employees, volunteers tell harbor’s story
Susan Schell
of the Gateway
The Harbor History Museum hasn’t officially opened its doors to the public, but it already has won a national contest.
The museum recently was chosen as the winner of the Antenna Audio Tour Contest.
“They knew we weren’t open yet,” museum curator Vicki Blackwell said. “We weren’t adding to something that’s already there.”
Museum Executive Director Jennifer Kilmer said the competition included museums that are up and running, plus cultural centers for the National Parks Service.
“We’re particularly proud of this,” she said.
Antenna Audio is the world’s leading producer of interpretive audio tours. The equipment allows a person to carry an audio device with them between exhibits and play an audio clip that corresponds to a particular display.
“They gave us one of their units to try out,” Kilmer said. “It’s an MP3 player, and it’s real simple. You can check it out at the reception desk and carry it with you through the gallery.”
Self-guided audio tours add another dimension to the museum, Kilmer said. The clips offer a lot more information than can be contained on reader boards.
“We’ve been surprised at how little you can put on an exhibit panel,” Kilmer said. “A lot of people will stand and read every single word, but a lot of people won’t.”
Linda McCowen, who chairs the program committee, said adding the sound is an integral part of the tour.
“Hearing offers more of an experience than just walking through,” she said.
“Being interactive is very important for what we want the museum to be,” Kilmer said. “Hearing things make it come to life for people, with different voices and music.”
Blackwell said she had done audio tours at other museums, and she knew they added additional layers to displays. It was especially important to visitors who are visually impaired.
Blackwell connected with Antenna Audio at a business conference in Atlanta. She thought Antenna’s hand-held devices and phone tour would work for Gig Harbor’s museum, but she figured implementing the feature would be something they could look at in the future.
However, Antenna allowed the museum to enter the contest anyway.
“The audio contest was a great way to get started,” Blackwell said. “Our staff or volunteers had to write it, record it and edit it.”
Different recorded voices added variety to the audio. They were supplied by Linda, Richard and David McGowan, Karen Haas, Nicole Langlow and Warren Belfany. Chris Ballasiotes donated a studio and his time to record a large portion of it.
“It was a lot of fun,” Linda McGowan said. “The whole idea of working with a different medium was a challenge.
“We start off with the Native Americans and move on to the first explorers and settlers.”
McGowan said it’s not just about Gig Harbor. There are separate neighborhoods like Cromwell, Artondale and Arletta that were their own little communities.
Besides voices, the audio includes music and sounds, like a steamboat bell ringing.
The Harbor History Museum emerged as the winner after the field had been narrowed to about 20 entries nationwide.
Along with the honor, the museum received 15 new XP-classic™ MP3 players, headsets, a 15-unit charging rack, a 12-month license for Antenna Audio’s XP-classic Updater™ software and access to the Omnimusic Library with a one-year license. The prizes add up to about $15,000 worth of equipment.
The museum will be able to offer audio tours when it opens. Officials hope that will be in mid-2010.
“It’s pretty incredible that we were selected out of 20 participants,” Blackwell said. “It’s one thing to create the audio, but another to have the equipment. Now, instead of having to get 30 units, we’ll only have to get 15.
“We have something to start with,” she added. “We can test it and see how it’s working.”