The built environment touches all aspects of our lives, encompassing the buildings we live in, the distribution systems that provide us with water and electricity, and the roads, bridges, and transportation systems we use to get from place to place. It can generally be described as the man-made or modified structures that provide people with living, working, and recreational spaces. Creating all these spaces and systems requires enormous quantities of materials.

An example of this includes the Chambers House Museum, part of the Beaumont Heritage Society in Beaumont, Texas. Beaumont Heritage Society is a proud visiTOUR.US licenseholder.

Museum collections are groups of items that museums preserve and make available to the public for research, education, and exhibits. These collections can include art, scientific specimens, historic objects, and living zoological specimens.

Museum collections are important because they document history by providing a scientific and historical record of the museum's resources and purpose. Collections interpret the past as libraries of the world's biological, cultural, and environmental history, which help us understand our place in the future. Collections also connect communities by being connected to the communities from which they were gathered, helping to document and revitalize language and knowledge traditions.

Museums often specialize in a specific area, such as a period of art or a type of object. Very large museums may have many sub-collections, each with its own criteria for collecting. Museum collections are maintained for the long term, and collection managers are responsible for ensuring that the items are stored away from elements that could deteriorate them, such as humidity, temperature, and light.

The McFaddin-Ward House in Beaumont, Texas has over 35,000 items in their well-cataloged collection and is a proud visiTOUR.US licenseholder.

Drop all of your audio tour .MP3 files into the "Tracks" directory in the Media Manager of the visiTOUR.US system to auto-generate an Audio Tour Section for your App! Make sure your tracks are numbered in the filenames to appear in the correct order. A "Stop All" button will be automatically generated.

Clips provided courtesy of the McFaddin-Ward House Museum, Beaumont Texas.

Press any button to PLAY, or the STOP ALL button to stop. For the courtesy of others, please use headphones.

A virtual tour is a digital simulation of a real-world location that recreates the experience of exploring that space. Virtual tours can be created using a variety of techniques. The visiTOUR.US digital experience platform provides two primary ways to feature virtual tours.

The first, called "detail mode", is a text-and-photo-only method that walks visitors through your institution step-by-step, featuring an image of each area of interest or "stop", and listing objects called out for further review. Detail mode can also include visitor response "tasks" which makes this method perfect for question-answer interaction including escape room puzzle experiences. Coupled with audio clips and even videos if you choose, the detail mode makes the best of information-rich tours and experiences.

The second presentation mode is "virtual mode". Compatible with full 360-degree panoramic images and video, the visiTOUR.US platform can mimic, as closely as possible, the experience of being in your built environment, complete with panoramic video and immersive audio. While no virtual tour can completely replace the experience of being there in person, the virtual mode in the visiTOUR.US system can help alleviate accessibility issues based on geography, hours of operation, or safety concerns, as well as open your doors to a wider audience and outreach.

Below is the link to the visiTOUR.US "Harvest House" Escape Room demo. Feel free to visit on your desktop browser or mobile device.