Historic Oakland Foundation Announces Official Mobile App for Oakland Cemetery

By Pamela Henman
It’s now easier than ever to connect with Atlanta’s history, as Historic Oakland Foundation (HOF) debuts its official mobile app for Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta’s oldest public burial ground.
Available now in the App Store and Google Play Store, the Historic Oakland Cemetery app features 65 points of interest throughout the cemetery’s 48 acres, including monuments and residents buried in the Original Six Acres, African American Grounds, Jewish Burial Grounds, Confederate Section, and more. Ten of the stops are accessible for free and the remaining 55 are available with a $1.99 in-app purchase.
The app features present-day and historical photos and a narrated description of each landmark’s history. App users can also receive push notifications about upcoming guided tours, special events, and programs at Oakland Cemetery and add those events to their mobile calendar. A social media share function also allows users to upload their shots of Oakland Cemetery to Facebook and Twitter.
“Our official app is a great way to explore Oakland Cemetery between visits and makes a great companion to a self-guided stroll around our grounds,” said David Moore, executive director at HOF. “We’re excited to have this new tool to communicate with larger and more diverse groups and look forward to the evolution of this and other technologies that will help us tell Oakland’s stories.”
Increasingly, HOF is leveraging new technologies to interpret Oakland Cemetery’s history. The organization is actively fundraising to create a geodatabase, which will enable HOF’s preservationists to store and share the vast amount of historic and current data on burials at the cemetery. Using geographic information systems (GIS) technology, HOF can store, manipulate, and share data, and information gleaned from the geodatabase will be used to enhance the quality and content of stops included on the mobile app.
In 2011 HOF debuted two audio guide tours: “Oakland’s Timeless Gardens” and “African American Voices,” which are available by dialing in on a mobile phone.
To download the Historic Oakland Cemetery app, visit the App Store or Google Play Store. For more information on Oakland Cemetery, visit www.oaklandcemetery.com.