Workers History Museum
Online only, $0
This is a curious museum, being online, rather than a physical locale. I was a little apprehensive, wondering how it’s different from any other history website and was pleasantly surprised.
The organization of the website museum (not to be confused with a museum website) is like the organization of a regular museum. There is the “Discover” page, which acts as a collection of exhibits, containing contextual content. There are information pages about different topics in workers’ history, and each page has both text and video components, here in the form of YouTube links.
The second page is for the “Collections”. This is a link to photographs; a handful of samples, and a link to a “hub” page to display those images in a more practical format than a regular website environment. There are several categories of images, mostly labour and labour-politics related.
One of the strengths of this particular digital museum, is that there is enough to explore some topics, without trying to cover every aspect of labour history to the point that the viewer gets lost. There are limited themes and topics, so that you can explore some in a more in-depth fashion, and the picture gallery supports that.
I spent about an hour and a half exploring the site, reading the content, and watching the videos. A lot of the content does deal with the federal public service and their union work, which is fair as that is the largest employment sector and union in Ottawa, though I often have my grudge against their middle-class solidary and neglect of the working-class.
This digital museum was worth my time to visit, and I hope you take the time to check it out.
