Johnson County Historical Society COUNTY MUSEUM

 Executive Director Margaret Weiting
Report from Cornell College Students Regarding Virtual Exhibit Project

      Presentation to the Johnson County Board of Supervisors
December 2006

Johnson County Historical Society Executive Director Margaret Weiting expressed her strong appreciation for the support of the Board of Supervisors.  She said that the Historical Society had the opportunity recently to establish a home base off of I-80, across the street from the Marriott Hotel.  She said it is one thing to have a building, but what is really important is what they do with it.  She said they see this building as a place where history comes alive for Johnson County, for visitors, and for tourists.  In this space they can educate and interpret the over-arching themes of the community.  The key focus of the museum is that it is a County museum where the stories of the community can be told.  She said that already North Liberty, River Junction, Lone Tree and Tiffin are exploring their stories and putting together an exhibit.  These will become part of a permanent display.  The funding from the Board of Supervisors significantly provides the resources that the Society can do operationally.  Weiting said that the wonderful thing about having space is the opportunities that present themselves.  In these past weeks, they have had the privilege of collaborating with University of Iowa Museum Studies students who worked on a veterans project doing exhibits and programming.  This morning she shared work that Cornell College students are doing in public memory and public history.  She said that the same thing is happening.  The critical thing about learning local history is that development of a sense of place and connectedness, and this cannot be more important than with young people.  She introduced Kate O’Brian, Alex Birdsall and Kelly Hughes, the Cornell students who will share their project with the Board.

O’Brian explained that part of the class assignment was to do a mini-internship with a local museum and then create a virtual exhibit online with the goal of having it linked to that museum’s website.  They worked with the Johnson County Historical Society and decided to do a virtual exhibit of the Poor Farm and the Asylum.  The goal of the exhibit is to provide information, encourage the public to visit, and to provide a history of this kind of treatment in Iowa.  Birdsall said they had toured the sites, and had done research in the Johnson County archives.  They also took pictures and did some information gathering for this exhibit.  Hughes said that they did an interview with Don Robinson who did a photography project about the Poor Farm and Asylum.  The subjects they will be touching on are advancements in health care, history, restoration and preservation.