Tennessee State Library & Archives

BPI in collaboration with Matt Kaser Design and Museum Fabrication Group developed the final design and exhibits for the newly opened Tennessee State Library & Archives. The exhibits were designed to engage casual guests to the library with a focus on the history of the archives and all of the amazing documents that can be found there.

BPI created five multi-touch digital interactives to support the interpretative plan. A slider map shows how Tennessee has changed over the course of 200 years, with seven perfectly aligned maps. “Explore Tennessee”, another map-based interactive allows users to zoom in on individual counties to learn facts about their local history.

To give visitors a detailed look at the work that goes into conserving documents and artifacts, BPI developed the “You be the Conservator” interactive. At each step in the process, a video demonstrates the distressed document and asks the user to decide the best course of action. 

The “Known and Notables” interactive features floating bubbles of events and figures in the state’s history such as the 1969 Cotton Festival or Dolly Parton. Users can tap whatever bubble they’re interested in to expand and get a summary of a few documents the library has on the subject. Finally, BPI developed the Genealogy interactive to bring documents like court documents and birth certificates to life. Visitors can investigate these curated documents to fill in the blanks of an average Tennessean’s family tree.