I chose to read “Outside the Collection Box: Connecting community with collections via augmented reality” from Brendan Ciecko’s list. The article describes some ways in which AR can benefit museums, with a focus on natural history museums. Something new that came to me as I was reading the article was how the standard state of an object differs between types of museums. The author of this article, M. Anne Basham, describes how many natural history specimens must be pressed or dried to be displayed, specifically in the context of botanicals. The object must be altered in order to be presented. It differs from something like art, where the original object is intended to be preserved as-is. It makes me wonder which would be more significant when using AR — something like Trevor’s original project proposal, where AR makes up for where preservation failed, or in a natural history museum, where AR makes up for where preservation succeeded but altered the object? I think both would be helpful for showing a different facet of a static object, but it’s interesting how they achieve the same goal by supplementing the opposite. It made me think about what supplementary information actually helps the visitors of museums. When is extra context worth pulling out your phone for? For natural history museums, I feel like their educational undercurrents make any extra information beneficial. But I wonder when it’s helpful for something like an art museum — I feel like there’s a harder balance to find in regards to didactic and emotional information, and also personal response.