The Impact of Virtual Exhibit On Promoting Collaboration Among Regional Partners

The poster highlights an innovative project design that emerged during the pandemic to create a hybrid in-person and virtual exhibit by utilizing partners' digital collections. Virginia Tech University Libraries led the project aiming to promote partner collaboration and increase the visibility of art, science, and cultural heritage materials of Southwest Virginia. The exhibit showcases six collections contributed by campus and regional partners, featuring over a hundred interactive digital objects, including photographs, journals, paintings, 3D geology minerals, and various 3D insect specimens. In addition to discussing the exhibit's background, themes, challenges, appropriateness, and effectiveness as a promotional tool, the poster also explores its impact on promoting collaboration among regional partners, the lessons learned, related work that resulted from the exhibit, and potential future projects. The presentation will include a text paragraph explaining the exhibit's background and a simple business chart poster that presents statistics obtained from Google Analytics and Artsteps website for interpreting the effectiveness of the virtual exhibit.