Community Engagement on Monticello Website
- By Janneken Smucker
- January 24, 2011
When the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF) selected Night Kitchen Interactive to redesign Monticello’s website, it embraced what Night Kitchen’s president, Matthew Fisher, describes as the “enormous potential for museums to effectively realize their objectives online through a dialogic relationship with their visitors.”
Fisher and Bill Adair, Director of the Heritage Philadelphia Program of the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, discuss this potential in their chapter of a forthcoming book (Fall 2011) tentatively titled, Letting Go? Public History Interpretation in a User-Generated World. TJF hoped that its website redesign would encourage Monticello community members to engage in a dialogue about Jefferson’s ideas, interests, and legacy.
In some ways, fostering this dialogue has been challenging, in part because museums are accustomed to having an authoritative institutional voice. But by integrating the voices of individual staff members into Monticello’s web presence, TJF has created a more multidimensional institutional voice that will encourage visitors, scholars, students, and Jefferson enthusiasts to participate in its community.
Monticello’s new website design helps achieve this goal through its social media functionality. As Matthew Fisher notes, “social media can facilitate very robust and sophisticated dialogues between experts and non-experts inexpensively, effectively, and in an asynchronous environment.” In addition to typical social media strategies, like maintaining Facebook and Twitter presences, Monticello’s staff and community members will be able to tag, favorite, and comment on individual web pages throughout the site, adding visitor tips regarding on-site tours and activities; confronting Jefferson’s legacy in such areas as slavery, religion, and politics; and sharing what they love about Monticello’s architecture, gardens, artwork, and exhibitions.
As TJF’s New Media Specialist Eric Johnson perceives it, “the real strength in this approach is that we’re bringing the kinds of conversations we’re already having in person—with each other and with our visitors—into the online environment. By doing that, we’re widening the circle of participants and enlivening the conversation about Thomas Jefferson and his world.” By allowing multiple voices to connect through these social media tools, the website will capture these conversations and engage with visitors in new and unexpected ways. This platform for community members to share their knowledge and interests will allow visitors to the website to uncover fascinating information about Jefferson and Monticello that they may not encounter otherwise.
For example, Monticello archaeologist Sara Bon-Harper revealed in a comment on the webpage highlighting Monticello’s historic vegetable garden that it was not the only place food was produced on the plantation: “Back then, slave labor contributed to the production of vegetables for the Jefferson family’s table BOTH in this substantial and impressive garden, and in the slaves’ own gardens adjacent to their own houses. We know that Monticello slaves sold vegetables and other products (eggs, for example) to the Jefferson family; this was one of their main entry points into the cash economy.” Bon-Harper’s comment provides a glimpse into the complex relationship between Jefferson and his enslaved workers while reminding visitors that Monticello’s gardens are not only a beautiful environment, but a place embedded with a multifaceted history. In time, community members can respond to Bon-Harper’s thoughts, engaging in a dialogue about the plantation’s spaces and the people that created the Monticello we see today.
In preparation for the launch of these social media aspects of the website, Monticello staff members—including visitor guides, archeologists, curators, gardeners, and administrators—have been commenting on their favorite web pages, tagging pages with descriptive terms, and writing engaging blog posts. Now that the website is live, the public—including you—will be able to join the Monticello community, and comment, tag, and favorite to your heart’s delight.
This rich user-generated content not only creates a more vibrant website, but encourages additional participation in a democratic forum, just as Jefferson would want it. Further, engagement online can only foster increased on-site participation in the Monticello community as well. As Monticello’s Johnson notes, “we’re making Monticello the institution a much more approachable place.” Visit Monticello’s community page to find out how you can be involved.
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