Mobile Museums Are Cool

Thank you all for a super duper semester!!

I was challenged AND I had fun while learning oodles and oodles.

(Oodles is data terminology for tons… or a lot.. or bunches.)

As discussed, here’s a copy of my abstract posted for all to peruse.

Project Title:              NJ Transportation Disabilities Mobile Museum – Bringing Access to
NJ’s Disabled

Institution:                 Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Project Director:       Brian N. Tobin, Masters Candidate in History

Grant Program:        Digital Projects for the Public: Production Grants

1. Nature of the Request – This digital project is a case study of the reaction of New Jersey Transit to the groundbreaking civil rights legislation American’s with Disabilities Act in 1990 as told by the people that developed it, implemented it, use it, and directly or indirectly benefit from it.

It is fundamentally a project about inclusion, participation, and citizenship. In that vein, it will also be used as a tool to expand the knowledge of the program and its benefits and obstacles.  In 2016, New Jersey Transit and its current leadership view the program as a monumental success[1].  It consistently earns the top user review scores in their quarterly assessments (SCOR) and brings the overall average of user satisfaction for the agency up.

In this project, we hope to develop a moving digital museum that allows the stories of the program from a variety of constituencies to be told to each other and the world.  These stories would include those of the people that developed and implemented the program in the early 1990s and those that have used and benefited from the program. It is important to note that the users are not the only groups of people that have used and benefited from the program.  It is the intention of the project to also include a section for the families of users to discuss their stories as well as less directly affected constituencies such as employers or educators who benefited from the participation of the disabled populations that would not have participated without the existence of the program.

As will be explained in greater detail in the Project Format section of this grant application, this mobile museum will have a strong digital component.  The bus’s exhibits will be kiosks with digital, video, and audio presentations about the people who make this program succeed and benefit from its existence.  It will also feature a strong user participation component that will enable the museum to collect more stories everywhere the mobile museum travels and in an online format that will be developed to supplement the physical museum. This hybrid method of physical location (that is mobile) and digital material that moves beyond the world of text will be beneficial for introducing various components of a person’s story and help to fully engage the museum’s visitors.

We do not intend to construct and curate the stories in a vacuum. It will be important for us to establish a broad Community Advisory Council (with Humanities experts) to help manage, direct, and isolate the stories that are important to telling the greater story. The disabled community is a vast community, but through strategic partnerships with such organizations such as New Jersey Transit, New Jersey Council on Disabilities, Disability Rights New Jersey, the Special Olympics New Jersey, the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce, the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, and other individual developmental and physical disability organizations, we hope to create a large and broad story about the human experience for those with disabilities and how a program such as New Jersey Access Link has increased access and participation for those with disabilities to the greater human experience.

We hope to show that access for the disabled is access to the real world through the case study of New Jersey Transit’s Access Link. We also hope to show that the world of disability affects everyone at some point in their lives – either directly or indirectly – with someone they love or care about.  This project looks to establish connections between people that often feel disconnected from the rest of the world.  Just like the ADA attempted to do in 1990 with physical access, we are trying to do with emotional connections in 2016 by creating both a community of affected individuals and preserving their realized hopes and dreams in a digital and mobile format.

[1] Siriani.