In this article, Linda A. Black, Exhibits Planning Director at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, demonstrates the usefulness of "quick and dirty" evaluation work by sharing key findings from Dr. Robert Wolf's series of one-month "mini studies."
Tom Skancke, Development Director of Discovery: The Children's Museum in Las Vegas, presents an outline of the market study and development plan produced by Laventol and Horwath, when the Las Vegas community decided to develop their children's museum. The plan illustrates the thoroughness with which initial audience research can and should be done, according to Skancke.
In this Editor's Note, guest editor Linda A. (Nikki) Black summarizes the content of this issue of "Visitor Behavior" and explains its goal to demonstrate the importance of evaluation to the success of smaller/newer museums as well as to demonstrate the role of evaluation in everyday operations.
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Linda A. (Nikki) BlackVisitor Studies Association
In this bibliography, Jacksonville State University researcher Stephen Bitgood presents a list of research reports on the topic of school field trips to museums and zoos.
In this article, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee researcher Don Thompson shares methods and findings from a front-end evaluation of the Plains Indian Exhibit Area at the Milwaukee Public Museum, which was used to inform exhibit renovation plans. Thompson assessed visitor knowledge of key concepts, the role of existing exhibits in fostering knowledge of these concepts, and unforeseen successes or shortcomings of the exhibits.
This is a summary of a publication by Michael Alt and Steven Griggs (1989), distributed by the Royal Ontario Museum, which provides a helpful model for others--both in terms of encouraging exhibit evaluation and in terms of how it might be accomplished. The publication summarizes four studies completed at the Royal Ontario Museum used to assess the "Mankind Discovering" exhibition from different perspectives: staff evaluation, visitor reaction, observational study of visitors, and visitor understanding and reaction to individual sections.
This article summarizes methods and key findings of a study conducted as part of the planning for a proposed museum on The Southeastern Native Americans. Researchers assessed visitor interest in Native American exhibitions, the general public's knowledge, interests, and misconceptions about Native Americans, and potential audiences for the museum.
This is a brief abstract of Pete Conroy's Master's Thesis at the University of Georgia. Through his research, Conroy identified and described two components of museum education: the audiences who use museums and key activities necessary for effective museum education.
This article summates findings from research at the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle that evaluated and compared visitor behavior in the gardens, main galleries and two temporary exhibits.
This is an abstract of Barbara J. Soren's 1990 Ph.D. Dissertation at Toronto University. Soren used an interpretive approach to understand the educational function of museums in curriculum-making terms. Soren conducted research at three informal sites in Ontario and found that planning for public education has features typical of a formal. curriculum-making process.
This is an abstract of Marilyn G. Hood's 1981 Ph.D. dissertation at Ohio State University. Hood researched the relationship between critical attributes of leisure choices and audience preferences for selected activities, such as museum participation. The research was carried out at the Toledo Museum of Art.
In this brief article, Ruth Freeman summarizes a report of ongoing evaluation efforts of the effectiveness of the Discovery Gallery at the Royal Ontario Museum.