Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum Partners with Google Public Sector to Reimagine Visitor Experience with AI and Augmented Reality
ALPLM and Google Public Sector will co-create new-age digital experiences for its visitors, powered by Google Cloud.

Springfield, Ill. and Washington D.C., Feb. 27, 2023 – The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum (ALPLM) and Google Public Sector today announced plans to digitally transform the visitor experience at the presidential museum, based in Springfield, Illinois. The collaboration will use artificial intelligence, extended reality (XR), and augmented reality (AR) technologies hosted on Google Cloud to create accessible, engaging, and interactive experiences for visitors.

ALPLM, which opened its doors to the public in 2005, welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. With this partnership, the museum will leverage XR to provide additional layers of information about museum exhibits, help visitors choose topics to explore further, and provide the information in languages and formats accessible to more people.

The museum will explore the possibilities of features like interactive audio-visual guides and video content around displayed artifacts. Google Cloud's Immersive Stream for XR could also help enable an immersive, gamified, and photorealistic experience for the museum’s visitors.

To create more inclusive experiences for museum visitors and digital audiences, ALPLM and Google Public Sector will also create assisted visual guides for people with disabilities and multilingual content for non-English speaking guests. A navigation guide, mapped in AR, could help bring historical characters to life, and enable a more accessible user journey.

Christina Shutt, executive director, ALPLM said, “The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum pioneered the use of new technology and storytelling tools to bring history to life. We have helped more than five million people connect with Lincoln’s legacy. With Google Cloud’s help, we will again bring cutting-edge technology to the museum to share the Lincoln story with more people in more ways.”

Brent Mitchell, managing director, U.S. state and local government, Google Public Sector, said, “We are proud to partner with ALPLM and help with its mission of bringing American history alive for millions of visitors. Technology has the power to tell stories in fresh, immersive ways, and we look forward to co-creating new digital experiences with ALPLM.”

The first phase of this collaboration will include the implementation of a pilot project, exploring possibilities to build digital experiences for ALPLM. The following phases will involve delivery of advanced experiences like 3D avatars, experiential history lessons and virtual reality tours, available on ALPLM’s digital platforms.

Google Cloud will be the foundation for building and delivering these experiences, giving ALPLM scalability, flexibility and cost benefits. Google  Cloud partner Thoughtworks will work with Google Professional Services to deliver this transformation for ALPLM.

About Google Cloud
Google Cloud accelerates every organization's ability to digitally transform its business. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google's cutting-edge technology – all on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.

About Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum
The mission of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is to inspire civic engagement through the diverse lens of Illinois history and sharing with the world the life and legacy of Abraham Lincoln. We pursue this mission through a combination of rigorous scholarship and high-tech showmanship built on the bedrock of the ALPLM’s unparalleled collection of historical materials – some 13 million items from all eras of Illinois history.