Though Mark Twain is roughly 100 years late to experience the advent of QR codes, his childhood home in Hannibal, Missouri, will have plenty of them around. The Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum has announced that it will be using the codes to give visitors a more interactive experience. The codes will be accompanied by a number of touch screen displays that contain information about the prolific writer and lecturer. Given Twain’s fabled love for science and technology, the codes seem to be a good fit.
The initiative is funded by F&M Bank’s George H. Riedel Private Foundation, which fronted $14,000 to help modernize the museum. The money helped museum officials purchase a sleuth of touch screen displays that will be used for many of the museum’s exhibits. The exhibits will also feature barcodes that, when scanned with a smart phone, grant visitors access to a mobile website where they can find information on a particular exhibit. The touch screens will contain various multimedia experiences that are related to the life of Mark Twain.
The money will also be used to fund new writing programs that are often held at the museum. The Mark Twain Young Authors Workshop is one of these programs. Museum officials believe that the inclusion of the codes will help visitors to experience Mark Twain in a new, more leisurely manner, something that Twain himself might have found worthwhile.
