SPRINGFIELD, IL & WASHINGTON, DC – The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum (ALPLM) and Google Public Sector today announced plans to digitally transform the visitor experience at the presidential museum, based in Springfield, Ill. The collaboration will use artificial intelligence, extended reality (XR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies hosted on Google Cloud to create accessible, engaging, and interactive experiences for visitors.
ALPLM, which opened to the public in 2005, welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. With this partnership, the museum will use XR to provide additional layers of information about museum exhibits, let visitors choose which topics to explore further, and provide information in languages and formats accessible to more people.
The museum will also explore the possibilities of features like interactive audio-visual guides and video content around displayed artifacts. Google Cloud’s Immersive Stream for XR could also enable an immersive, gamified, and photorealistic experience for the museum’s visitors.
To create more inclusive experiences for museum visitors and digital audiences, ALPLM and Google Public Sector will also create assisted visual guides for people with disabilities and multilingual content for non-English speaking guests. A navigation guide, mapped in AR, could bring historical characters to life, and enable a more accessible user-journey.
Christina Shutt, executive director, ALPLM, said, “The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum pioneered the use of new technology and storytelling tools to bring history to life. We have helped more than five million people connect with Lincoln’s legacy. With Google’s help, we will again bring cutting-edge technology to the museum to share the Lincoln story with more people in more ways.”
Brent Mitchell, managing director, Google Public Sector, U.S. State and Local Government said, “We are proud to partner with ALPLM and help with its mission of bringing American history to life for millions of visitors. Technology has the power to tell stories in fresh, immersive ways, and we look forward to co-creating new digital experiences with ALPLM.”
The first phase of this collaboration will include the implementation of a pilot project, exploring possibilities to build digital experiences for ALPLM. The following phases will involve delivery of advanced experiences like 3D avatars, experiential history lessons and virtual tours, available on ALPLM’s digital platforms.
The Google Cloud Platform’s IaaS and PaaS layers will be the foundation for building and delivering these experiences, giving ALPLM scalability, flexibility and cost benefits. Google Cloud partner Thoughtworks will work with Google Professional Services to deliver this transformation for ALPLM.
About Google Cloud
Google Cloud accelerates every organization’s ability to digitally transform its business. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google’s cutting-edge technology – all on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.
About Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum
The mission of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is to inspire civic engagement through the diverse lens of Illinois history and sharing with the world the life and legacy of Abraham Lincoln. We pursue this mission through a combination of rigorous scholarship and high-tech showmanship built on the bedrock of the ALPLM’s unparalleled collection of historical materials – some 13 million items from all eras of Illinois history.
