With its beautiful architecture, Orton Hall is an Ohio State landmark. Completed in 1893, it was constructed to house Ohio’s first natural history museum and the original University Library. Now, after nearly a year in preparation, you can take a virtual tour of Orton Hall and enjoy spectacular new imagery of this great treasure, as well as view its amazing collections in a whole new way.
The Orton Geological Museum and Library Virtual Tour is the result of a collaborative effort organized and compiled by Jessica Henderson in OSU’s Office of Distance Learning. It has drawn on the talents of an array of learning and technology specialists. The Virtual Tour highlights the building’s architecture and artwork, inside and outside, highlights parts of the collections that are on display, and highlights parts of the collections that are in storage in the research areas. It features spectacular new drone footage of Orton Hall, drone footage of the dinosaur in the Atrium, and both still and LiDAR images of specimens in the Museum Gallery. The 3D renderings of the Megalonyx ground sloth and Tyrannosaurus rex skull are interactive; the viewer can manipulate them virtually to view the specimens from any angle, or can enlarge them for a more detailed look. LiDAR images of some of the stone carvings in the Atrium provide exceptionally fine images of the building’s exquisite details in areas that are normally obscure. The details of the grotesques that adorn Orton’s bell tower are revealed in a way that we have never been able to see before. And the fine stone carvings that frame the windows of the buildings, which commonly go unnoticed, are rendered in crisp new imagery.
The Virtual Tour of Orton Hall is an important addition to the learning tools available on the Museum’s website. It provides accessibility to the Museum to those who cannot physically make a journey to Orton Hall. For those who can make the trip, it provides a first glimpse of what can be expected. And for those who wish to use the Virtual Tour while walking through the space, it provides informative pop-up explanations of many of the specimens on display. One feature that increases accessibility is a button that allows for on-demand language translation, both written and oral.
The Virtual Tour is a learning and promotional tool that we can use in a wide variety of applications. Already it has been used in our undergraduate and graduate classrooms, it has been used in talks to K-12 audiences, and it has been used at a recruiting event. We are planning to incorporate it in digital displays that accompany our physical displays at external venues. These are events where we interact with many people, some of whom just might be inclined toward a career in the Earth Sciences. More broadly, Ohio State’s College of Arts and Sciences can use this as a promotional tool, and K-12 educators or faculty at other institutions can incorporate this Virtual Tour in their lesson plans. It is freely available for the public to use as well. Because the Virtual Tour addresses Orton Hall’s unique architectural and artistic elements, as well as its world-class collections, it should be useful and interesting to a broad segment of the population.
The Virtual Tour of Orton Hall serves as a model that can be applied to documenting other interesting facilities on campus, including its collections and historic buildings.