The museum has posted the barcodes so visitors can learn more about its history.
The Pinellas County Heritage Village has updated some of its signage using QR codes in order to take advantage of the ability of many of its visitors to scan the barcodes in order to obtain more information about the history of the buildings and enhance their overall experience.
One of the barcodes has been placed on a sign for the McMullen-Coachman log cabin.
When those QR codes are scanned, an audio history is played, which reveals that the cabin is actually the oldest building in the village – which is located near Clearwater – and that it was built by Captain James Parramore McMullen, a Florida settler, in 1852. This feature could help to enhance or even replace some of the more traditional audio tours that are often enjoyed by visitors to other museums.
The QR codes help to make the experience at the village more interactive, which is an important goal there.
The village, which is located in Largo, has made numerous efforts to help to bring the past to life for its visitors. Throughout the tour of the village, guests can enter real buildings and watch volunteers provide demonstrations of different tasks and activities from the time, such as historic techniques for spinning wool.
The museum’s organizers have expressed that they are hopeful that the QR codes will build a larger appeal for the experience among the growing smartphone using local and tourist populations. They believe that these quick response barcodes have the ability to build dimension to the overall experience by providing added information about the historic building architecture that wouldn’t be possible to include on the signage for the structures.
Moreover, they also believe that it will be more appealing for visitors to scan the QR codes that interest them in order to receive the information, instead of having to rent headset devices. As the barcodes are becoming quite commonplace nowadays – appearing in billboards, on posters, in magazine ads, and even on business cards – they are not at all unfamiliar to many smartphone carrying tourists.
