A new vir­tu­al mu­se­um is just one ad­di­tion to the num­ber of ac­tiv­i­ties that have moved from the brick and mor­tar world to the vir­tu­al re­al­i­ty world.

His­to­ri­an Ger­ard Besson, who is a con­sul­tant at Paria Pub­lish­ing, said the new vir­tu­al mu­se­um he built for the blog "Caribbean His­to­ry Archives" was launched two weeks ago.

"Things slowed down be­cause of COVID-19 and we de­cid­ed that we would gath­er all the pho­tos we had from dif­fer­ent mu­se­ums and put them up. It was my idea to put it in a blog for­mat," Besson said.

"We have so many young peo­ple at home look­ing at their smart­phones and I de­cid­ed it was a good idea to bring a mu­se­um to their phones."

There is a nar­ra­tive that goes along with all the pho­tos on the blogs that walk the read­er through­out the dif­fer­ent his­tor­i­cal eras. Peo­ple will find a lot of in­for­ma­tion, pho­tographs, maps and oth­er ma­te­r­i­al that they can down­load and read.

*The first sec­tion of the vir­tu­al mu­se­um con­tains pho­tos of the sug­ar in­dus­try in T&T at Brechin Cas­tle, Cou­va. Besson said the vir­tu­al mu­se­um of the sug­ar in­dus­try in T&T was im­por­tant as it rep­re­sents the ori­gins of a lot of the eth­nic and cul­tur­al groups in this coun­try–from Afro Trinida­di­ans to In­do Trinida­di­ans to Por­tuguese to Chi­nese im­mi­grants who worked on these es­tates.

*The sec­ond sec­tion is a tour of the pitch lake at La Brea. Besson said they did a vir­tu­al mu­se­um for the pitch lake as it rep­re­sents the be­gin­ning of the petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try in the coun­try.

*The third sec­tion is a tour of the city of Port-of-Spain. Besson said the vir­tu­al mu­se­um for the city of Port-of-Spain was im­por­tant as it rep­re­sents the dif­fer­ent phas­es of the city’s growth and its cos­mopoli­tan na­ture.

Besson said they have been get­ting over 1,500 hits dai­ly since they launched and they con­tin­ue to get pos­i­tive feed­back. "We got sev­er­al emails from teach­ers. One teacher said that she’ll make use of them right away."

He said the vir­tu­al mu­se­um which was set up still has a long way to go be­fore it reach­es in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els like the Smith­son­ian Vir­tu­al Mu­se­um in the Unit­ed States and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al­ly renowned mu­se­ums which give vir­tu­al tours. The plan is to cre­ate 3D pre­sen­ta­tions as they of­fer more vir­tu­al tours.

Besson said these are "di­vi­sive times," but when peo­ple look at their his­to­ry, they will re­alise that there is a com­mon her­itage shared and that is why mu­se­ums are im­por­tant to show­case the truth.