what will the museum of the future be like?

Reasons to use apply Web 2.0 communication principles to museums

Hi,

Does anybody know about a research or data about why museums engage in Web 2.0 and social media communication?

Until now I could only find a paper written by Lynne Teather and Kelly Wilhelm mentioning a research done in 1997 by Stephanie James on why museums were going to the Web.

The results were:

Promotion/Marketing	30%	WWW Presence	19%
Education	10.8%	Corporate/Regional Initiative	8%
Public Access	8%	Fulfills Mandate	5.4%
Entertainment	5.4%	Community Awareness/Outreach	5.4%⁶⁴
Other	8%

73.5% also mentioned that the purpose of the site had evolved in the form of design and content and that there had been a shift away from marketing and promotional work to:

Greater Access to Collections	38%	Greater Educational Focus	23%
Increasing Interactivity	15%	Increasing Staff Input	15%
Increasing Public Input	8%

She also found that 42% could not identify any theory behind their site, although others identified marketing, communication, education, information, design, entertainment and
common sense.⁶⁵ 54% had no testing of visitors to the site, 14%
examined hits, and 9% in-depth survey. Most web endeavours originated in
technical services or marketing departments.⁶⁶ ”(Teather
and Wilhelm:1998).

Cheers

Denis