Researchers have long utilized copies of important Edgar Allan Poe letters and documents housed in far-flung locations. Whether viewed on paper or on a computer screen, these images allow the public to study accurate facsimiles of otherwise inaccessible originals and to make new discoveries such as lines incorrectly transcribed by earlier scholars or words only visible through digital manipulation of an image. This allows students to conduct extensive research without leaving their offices. Studying three-dimensional artifacts, however, has thus far presented an obstacle to easy access because scrutinizing the objects has necessitated an expensive and time-consuming visit to see the originals. As the holder of a significant collection of Edgar Allan Poe’s possessions, the Poe Museum in Richmond is working to change that by making both Poe’s artifacts and Poe’s Richmond more accessible than ever before. Thanks to 3D scanning and to the assistance of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Virtual Curation Laboratory, Poe-related artifacts will soon be available to a global audience.Anthropology professor Bernard Means and his students from the Virtual Curation Laboratory have scanned several objects from the Poe Museum’s collection since their initial visit in 2016. Means established the laboratory in 2011 to create virtual catalogs of the findings excavated at nearby archeological sites like Jamestown and James Madison’s Montpelier. Since then, the laboratory has scanned historical artifacts for museums, historic houses, and dig sites throughout the country and as far away as India. While Means admits to having been interested in Poe since junior high school, when he first read the author’s works, he did not visit the Poe Museum until one of his students, a former museum tour guide, brought him there in 2016. This is when he met the curator and offered to scan some objects from the collection.Means has enlisted a variety of scanners for the Poe Museum project. In order to scan small items, like the trinket box of Virginia Poe (1822–1847), the team places each object on a turntable, which takes about half an hour to make a full rotation in front of a NextEngine laser scanner. After being scanned in an upright position, the object is scanned a second time while it is in a horizontal position. During these rotations the scanner records the distance traveled by the laser between the lens and each portion of the artifact. The process produces a visually crisp image that depicts the artifact’s color and texture at a resolution high enough to be accurately reproduced with a 3D printer.For scanning larger artifacts, like Poe’s trunk, which are too large to fit on the turntable, the team utilizes two alternative options. The first solution is to use a tablet equipped with Go!SCAN 50, which records the object in patterns of light and dark squares. The student carries the tablet around the object, carefully pointing the tablet’s native camera at the piece in order to record it from all angles.Another technique involves using the tablet’s lidar camera to photograph the piece multiple times from top to bottom and from side to side around the entire object. These digital images are then stitched together by the software into a three-dimensional recreation of the artifact. When an object, such as a statue, is either attached to a wall or too large to lift, the side that the student is unable to photograph can be recreated digitally.With the help of these techniques, the team is gradually adding to the Poe Museum’s digital catalog, which currently includes scans or photographs of over 1,700 of the collection’s first editions, manuscripts, letters, and photographs. Many of these are available for viewing on the Poe Museum’s website. While creating complete and accessible digital records of the institution’s artifacts is an essential component of achieving the museum’s mission of bringing Poe to the world, this is only one of several applications for the 3D scanning technology.Its most popular application is creating three dimensional prints of artifacts. According to Means, “No matter how fancy a scan is, people really do want to touch things.” At the ongoing archeological excavation at the site of the original Jamestown fort, Means has printed replicas of newly unearthed artifacts that are often too fragile to handle. In addition to creating a digital catalog of the objects, he invites the public to hold the prints in order to better under their size, shape, and texture.Means has also printed scans of dinosaur fossils for display in museums. This protects the fossils from possible damage suffered during travel and saves the museums the shipping and insurance expenses associated with loaning the originals. Much the same can be done with certain Poe artifacts.Among the first of the Poe Museum’s artifacts to be scanned and printed was the key to Poe’s trunk. While the object remains on display behind a protective layer of Plexiglas, museum docents are able to share a printed replica of it with student visitors. Museum representatives have also carried copies of the key with them to presentations in order to allow audience members to examine them.Educators have also utilized the prints in their classrooms. For a performance task she designed, Gillian Lambert, a Henrico County, Virginia, middle school English teacher, provided her students copies of the key and facsimiles of four letters concerning Poe’s death. Since the key was thought to have been found in Poe’s pocket after his death, the students were tasked with determining what it might reveal about the poet’s final days. The scan of Poe’s key has surely been used in multiple lesson plans since it has been viewed more than 1,100 times since Means posted it online.Another application for this technology is the digital repair of damaged objects. One of the Poe Museum’s busts, a miniature version of the depiction of Poe by George Julian Zolnay (1863–1949) created for the University of Virginia in 1898, is missing half of its nose and a portion of its forehead. Means recently scanned the piece and will recreate the missing parts in his laboratory. The image thus created on the computer screen will represent the artist’s intention in a virtual bust that can be rotated and enlarged in order to view it from any angle. Should the museum wish, Means can produce a 3D print of the virtually repaired bust or simply print a copy of the missing nose to be attached to original sculpture.Elsewhere in the collection, the original plaster model Charles Rudy (1904–1986) created for his statue of Poe at the Virginia State Capitol is missing portions of a thumb and index finger. Means can recreate these pieces to allow the museum’s guests to see the sculpture as the artist intended it. The replica digits will be easily removable in the event that the materials are deemed incompatible with the plaster.This process has already been used to recreate damaged sculptures on a ceremonial urn in the portico of Richmond’s Monumental Church, where Poe attended services with his foster parents. Pollution and the elements had caused the marble urn to disintegrate beyond repair with large portions completely missing. The site’s owners, the Historic Richmond Foundation, scanned what remained of the object, recreated the missing portions in a computer, and reproduced the urn as it first appeared. The new marble urn now stands in place of the original in the church’s portico.Since this technology can replace a missing nose, it can also help recreate lost Poe sites. Using available photographs and reconstructed floorplans of Poe’s childhood home, which was demolished in 1890, digital artists can recreate the interiors and furnish them with scans of the museum’s chairs, tables, and artwork from that house. Such a virtual interior can be explored on the computer screen or through virtual reality, with a VR headset. Exploring this lost site might provide scholars with new insights into Poe’s works. His guardian’s collection of cut glass displayed in a mirrored east parlor, for instance, might be what Poe had in mind when he expressed disdain for such effects in “The Philosophy of Furniture.” Maybe researchers will even locate a library with a transom window tall enough to hold a bust of Pallas. In her book Houses of Old Richmond, a former resident of the house, Mary Wingfield Scott (1895–1983), recalled seeing the very transom described in Poe’s poem “The Raven.”Reconstructing a demolished house could eventually lead to the resurrection of a burned city. Of great interest to the museum’s board and visitors is the scanning and recreation of the museum’s five-meter-long scale model of Poe’s Richmond. Given its size, this meticulous recreation of the city and buildings Poe knew during his lifetime is difficult to display in the museum’s historical buildings and has been held in storage for the past four years. A digital recreation, viewable at the museum through a touch screen or accessible remotely through the Internet, can finally provide access to this invaluable resource without the space limitations of a physical exhibit. Freed from the pane of glass that once separated visitors from the original model, the virtual version will give users a closer look than previously possible. They will be able to traverse the streets Poe knew and gain a greater understanding of the city in which he spent much of his youth, began his career in journalism, and visited during the last months of his life. Access to greater detail and more perspectives will allow users to more easily visualize the city and to make connections that might have otherwise been overlooked. They will, for example, be able to recreate the routes Poe walked from his boarding house on Bank Street to his place of employment at the Southern Literary Messenger office. Along the way, he passed hotels in which slave auctions were held and came within a block of Lumpkin’s Jail, a notorious detention facility for the enslaved. One may wonder how Poe might have felt reading the glowing review by Nathaniel Beverley Tucker (1784–1851) of J. K. Paulding’s Slavery in the United States and William Drayton’s The South Vindicated from the Treason and Fanaticism of the Northern Abolitionists, which appeared in the April 1836 issue, while watching slaves marched to auction outside his window. Countless other connections might be made between the Richmond landmarks Poe encountered and the works he produced. Short of walking the streets of antebellum Richmond, much of which burned in the closing days of the Civil War, an explorable 3D scan of the model provides today’s public best opportunity to see the city he experienced.On a more intimate scale, viewers can also interact with smaller objects in augmented reality, which allows them to see the object floating in the room with them. Using their phone or tablet, users will be able to rotate or flip an object to see angles not visible while the piece is on display. In the process, they might take a closer look at inscriptions or hallmarks found on the bottom or back of an object. Such information provides essential information about a piece’s date and place of manufacture and its provenance. Sometimes unexpected information or inscriptions can be found in these hidden areas. Allowing more people to see such hidden annotations can potentially help the museum determine their relevance.The applications of this technology have only begun to be realized. So far, the Virtual Curation Lab has scanned several of the Poe Museum’s pieces, including Poe’s trunk, Virginia Poe’s trinket box, irons from Poe’s childhood home, plaster heads from the crown molding of Poe’s sister’s home, a taxidermized raven, and several busts and statues of Poe. As the laboratory scans more objects, the images will be posted online, and selected artifacts will be reproduced as three-dimensional prints. Each new object added to the database brings the public a bit closer to Poe’s Richmond.