what will the museum of the future be like?
Making Visitor Studies Usable
Hi All,
I am an intern at the Field Museum in Chicago. I'm working in Exhibit Development, and my very daunting task this summer is to figure out a plan for making all of the visitor studies we have, both our own and ones sent to us from other museums, easy to use effectively. We've built up so much information over the years, but if a designer wants to, say, see how children learn from interactives, they may not know to look in the paper titled "Dinosaur Exhibit".
My task then is to create a database with a search tool that helps museum staff find the information they're looking for. This has proved very difficult, so if anyone has any suggestions of how to do smart archiving of visitor studies, or who you know might have bright ideas, I would really appreciate it! Thank you.
I am an intern at the Field Museum in Chicago. I'm working in Exhibit Development, and my very daunting task this summer is to figure out a plan for making all of the visitor studies we have, both our own and ones sent to us from other museums, easy to use effectively. We've built up so much information over the years, but if a designer wants to, say, see how children learn from interactives, they may not know to look in the paper titled "Dinosaur Exhibit".
My task then is to create a database with a search tool that helps museum staff find the information they're looking for. This has proved very difficult, so if anyone has any suggestions of how to do smart archiving of visitor studies, or who you know might have bright ideas, I would really appreciate it! Thank you.
Tags: archiving, evaluation, studies, visitor
Views: 11
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Carey Tisdal on -
Hi Avery,
We started an archive of reports when I was at the St. Louis Science Center. The first step is getting that archive set up. That was several years ago and we were in that half paper/half digital moment. Now, I would think that you can make it to the all digital stage. But the search terms are the issues. Librarians call those the "authority table." The alternative is tagging items and letting the connections grow over time. I think the latter options makes more sense for you since defining those terms would be difficult.
Could you use a Wiki, e.g. Google Sites, that allows you to tag documents? That would allow you to "grow" some search terms rather than having to predefine them. It might also allow you to leave comments under documents.
The other issue is that the findings may only be "part" of the document and a tag or term may refer to the document as a whole. A bigger issue is whether "lifing" (decontextualizing) an evaluation finding gives you good information. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
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