Museum Techmuse

National Archives Project: visitors as participants

Our new installation, developed in collaboration with Northern Light Productions and National Archives staff, places schoolgroup visitors directly in the role of participants in the research process. During the process, students record their findings about primary source documents from the Archives. Unbeknownst to them, their audio recordings are incorporated on the fly into a video "press conference" that they participate in at the conclusion of the experience (see photo).

According to staff, the middle school participants (and teacher workshops) love it -- they are "amazed" to be drawn into the process and have their own voices incorporated in the high end production. My own favorite moment: when students who are role-playing archivists (wearing National Archives research jackets with white gloves on hand) dramatically wheel in on carts the primary source documents. National Archives staff (including Marvin Pinkert, LeeAnn Potter, and Will Sandoval) have created a memorable experience for visitors, one that merges the drama of novel experience with the media we developed.

Participants at a "press conference", in which their own voices are inserted into the high-end video. (Click to enlarge)

Skirball Cultural Center: Build a Better World

This week the Noah's Ark exhibit opens at the Skirball Cultural Center in LA. And at the end of this exhibit, visitors work with staff to describe ways they can help create a better world. We used a variation of our StoryKiosk software to project the visitor's image and commitment on the wall, floating up into the sky, creating a gallery of visitor visions floating in the space. Visitors can choose to email their vision home to encourage post-visit activity related to this vision.

The exhibit as a whole is about meeting challenges (storms), finding community (arks), and creating a more hopeful world (rainbows). The Skirball Center has an extraordinary roster of programs lined up for visitors, and the hope is to use the email feature of the program to remind visitors throughout the year of programs that might help them achieve their visions. (In my mind, this comes close to what Elaine Gurian has called "the essential museum", in which the museum becomes an essential resource for visitors creating meaning in their daily lives).

Visitors' images and commitments are projected on the wall and then emailed home as a post-visit reminder. (click to enlarge).

Geotagging photos in zoos and parks

An interesting article in the NY Times this morning ("Snapshots That Do More than Bore Friends") about new sites such as Everytrail.com and Zoomandgo.com that allow users to view photos taken by other users by specific location. Essentially, users created guided tours (with photos and notes) for other users.

There are many implications for zoos, parks, nature centers, and other outdoor locations. Allowing visitors to create tours for other visitors is a major step -- it engages the visitor who creates the tour at a deeper, more constructivist level. And it spreads word of the park to other visitors online. A current stumbling block is there are few cameras equipped with GPS technology to automatically stamp the photos, but some cell phones are starting to incorporate this.

Evaluating Museum Websites: MW2007, NEMA, IMLS

The past month I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about museum websites as a judge for MW2007 and NEMA’s website competitions, and as a reviewer for IMLS. How do you evaluate a museum web initiative? What are some criteria?

Museums and the Web has developed a well-defined set of five criteria.  For NEMA, I added a sixth category: “Audience Outreach”. Aspects of this  fundamental underlying issue include:

• To what extent does the media anticipate visitor needs and interests?  (All too often, the tendency is to assume that the content is intrinsically interesting and worthy without considering specifically how the content might add value or meaning to the daily lives of visitors).
• Does the initiative support pre-visit planning where appropriate?
• Does it support post-visit and long-term learning where appropriate?
• Can the visitor participate by contributing to the content or shaping it in a way that is personally meaningful?