What’s Out There, Most Comprehensive Online Database of America’s Designed Landscapes, Now Optimized for Hand Held Devices
Media Contact: Nord Wennerstrom | T: 202.255.7076 | E: nord@tclf.org
What’s Out There, Most Comprehensive Online Database of America’s Designed Landscapes, Now Optimized for Hand Held Devices
For landscape lovers, heritage travelers & others, new What’s Nearby function allows GPS-enabled devices to identify What’s Out There sites up to a 25-mile radius from any given location
Washington, DC (May 14, 2013) – The Cultural Landscape Foundation today announced that the Web-based What’s Out There (WOT), the most comprehensive, searchable database of the nation’s publicly accessible designed landscapes, has been optimized for smart phones and similar hand held devices. The database, launched in October 2009, spans more than two centuries of American landscape design and is searchable by landscape name, locale, designer, type, and style. It’s profusely illustrated and includes a glossary of 27 types, 49 sub-types, and 14 styles, more than 650 designer profiles (from the Pioneers of American Landscape Design), 1,300 site entries, 9,000 images, descriptions of some of our country’s most important cultural landscapes, and relevant links. Larger text and photos are among the features of the new hand held device interface along with maps and photos that can be “scrolled” to see the next page, and a simplified menu that focuses on What’s Out There, Pioneers, and foundation organized events. The most significant new feature, What's Nearby, allows GPS-enabled devices to identify WOT sites up to a 25-mile radius from any given location. Funding for the hand held optimization was made possible by grants from the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and National Center for Preservation Technology and Training.
“The greatest increase in traffic to WOT and the foundation’s Web site is coming from hand held devices, which more than doubled in the past year,” said Charles A. Birnbaum, TCLF Founder and President. “The upgrades and improvements, particularly the What’s Nearby function, will permit landscape lovers, heritage travelers or simply those with some spare time, to discover, visit and enjoy the nation’s rich legacy of designed landscapes.”
Additions from around the country are made each week to WOT and there are also initiatives focused on individual states. In 2012, more than 150 Maine sites were added in a dedicated project funded in part with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts ArtWorks program. TCLF created the Maine entries working in partnership with the Maine Historical Society. In 2013, a dedicated effort also funded with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts ArtWorks program will produce at least 100 sites in Virginia. The work will be done in collaboration with faculty and students from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) and the University of Virginia (UVa).
About The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF)
The Cultural Landscape Foundation provides people with the ability to see, understand and value landscape architecture and its practitioners, in the way many people have learned to do with buildings and their designers. Through its Web site, lectures, outreach and publishing, TCLF broadens the support and understanding for cultural landscapes nationwide to help safeguard our priceless heritage for future generations.
