What's happening to this blog?

Hello everyone. As you may have noticed I have not made any new posts to this blog since May. Why? Well, on 7th June we launched the Australian Museum's new website. Since then, I have been beavering away uploading content to my revamped Audience Research Unit website. That site includes two blogs.

The Audience Research Blog continues the types of posts I have been doing here, primarily answering queries I get via email, reporting on conferences/workshops etc, posting interesting links, discussing Web 2.0 issues (my passion!) and generally pontificating as I do!

The Visitor Voices Blog highlights the voice of the visitor through uploading comments received about our various public programs - uncensored!

There will be RSS feeds attached to those blogs very soon, so please visit, join our site and start commenting!

Audience Research 2.0

As most of you know, I have been thinking lots about how the tools of the web will impact on audience research practices. I'm using Web 2.0 apps in several audience research experiments, with my overall premise being that these tools will fundamentally change the dynamic between visitors and museums and we need to re-think how we do evaluation - less focus on methodology and more on participation.

This is what will make museums relevant in my view - a move from visitor as participant to visitor as partner, being able to have their own say and share their own stories, both at physical sites and online (which will eventually converge).

To this end we are running another project using an exhibition development blog and Facebook group for the All About Evil exhibition. This project aims to:
* engage the audience in developing the exhibition at the front-end
* see if a blogging tool can do this
* see how we could use Facebook to engage a different audience
* track the time it takes for our input compared with the outcome

We'll keep you posted. I'll be blogging most of our progress here on Museum 3.0.

From Taipei, Part 3

Final day of the trip was Monday when I gave two papers:

• The Role and Development of the Australian Museum Audience Research Centre discussing how the Australian Museum Audience Research Centre was developed using a series of evaluation studies as examples
  
• How to be a professional audience researcher using a large evaluation of a Museum exhibition to illustrate how to do audience research
  

These papers can be found here on my Audience Research wiki.

Here are the other links I promised:

• Museum professional development and training in Australia: my notes about this talk are here and the PowerPoint slides are online here
  
• Older Audiences and Museums publication can be downloaded from the website here
  
• Telling Lives exhibition: where visitors could video-tape their response to an exhibition which were then uploaded to YouTube (Inthink, it's been awhile since I looked here
  
• Museum 3.0 social network: feel free to join up, ask questions and contribute to discsusions
  

Finally, thought I'd repeat a quote from my favourite audience researcher, Benjamin Gilman, as we started and finished the day with him:

To fulfil its complete purpose as a show, a museum must do the needful in both ways. It must arrange its contents so that they can be looked at; but also help its average visitors to know what they mean. It must at once install its contents and see to their interpretation. (1918, quoted in Black, 2005).

It's all so simple really...

Anyway, overall a successful trip and looking forward to working together a lot more in the future. Thanks for your hospitality and the poster (which I almost left at Hong Kong airport!) was truly awesome – I'll try find somewhere appropriate to hang it in my new office.

From Taipei, Part 2

Spent a really interesting morning on Saturday with Wanchen' s students from the Fu Jen Catholic University. Their task was to read an evaluation report I had sent them, comment on it and raise questions. They did a really good job, considering that some of the reports were rather complex and long! The questions they raised came under the following categories (which I think I'll use when reorganising my website as part of the general Museum website rebuild project).

Planning an evaluation:

• Working with those who commissioned the evaluation (for example, exhibition project teams, program managers, other staff and specialists)
  
• Understanding the content of the program to be evaluated
  
• Developing the evaluation questions – what do we already know and what are the gaps?
  
• Determining the target audience
  
• Designing the method
  

Undertaking the evaluation:

• Different methods (questionnaires, online surveys, focus groups, in-depth interviews, tracking, observations)
  
• Sampling – how to maximise sample based on target audience; determining the sample size; maximising response rates
  
• Working with consultants
  

Analysing results/writing the report:

• How to write reports that people will read (for example, layering information, including Executive summaries)
  
• Mixture of text and facts/figures
  
• Identifying what it all means
  

Applying the findings:

• How to get findings accepted
  
• How to use the findings in planning future programs
  
• Engaging and involving staff in the evaluation (below are points from one of my Monday papers):
  
  • Include staff in planning the evaluation
    
  • Involve staff in the data gathering phases – attend focus groups, conduct surveys, undertake observations
    
  • Work through the findings together – the final report should never be a surprise
    
  • Include staff in debriefs – and have an open discussion at the debrief about what the findings mean both for the current exhibition/program and for future projects
    
  • Have an objective third-party undertake evaluation if findings may be of a sensitive or controversial nature, or when you need specialist skills
    
  • Use current organisational communication systems to publicise findings in usable ways
    
  • Use new media to disseminate information (for example make films or use sound bytes)
    

The session was a great and I thank you all for having me. Ended the day with visits to the Longshan Temple, Red Theatre Tea House and an awesome vegetarian restaurant including music, magic and kung-fu performances – thanks Tzu-yu, Yider and Cookie. (Oh, and also managed to buy myself a pair of nice brown boots for $41AUD!!)

Vivid/Heartbeat Trends Presentation 25 September

Went to this great session today organised for clients by market research consultants Heartbeat Trends and Vivid. The session was looking at trends based on both quantitative and qualitative research. Here are my notes.

Heartbeat Trends What's Next Study:

• Gen X and Gen Y are different – can't speak to them all the same
  
• Kidfluence: Gen X often lumped together but in reality are very different, by 2011 most couples will not have children
  
• Better to divide those with kids and those without – as are vastly different, cannot target both using the same strategy
  
• Glass wall dividing work and family will break as employers need to recognise that their male workers are active fathers
  
• Division between work and family life is striking fatheres and they are starting to think more like mothers in regards to kids, esp. when at work
  
• Little Emperors: people say they want big families, but what they want to provide means they really can only have one child and therefore this new generatioon will be even more spoiled. Single child families are on the rise, these kids will be a more driven, confident and empowered generation than today's kids. Current Gen Y will be nothing compared to little emperors! I want it and I want it now
  
• Future of health: discontent with healthcare system, expectation that they will be treated straight away – no waiting
  
• Future food: a lot more people are growing their own food in order to feel connected to the earth, accessible gardens will be on the rise, local green grocers – people are really thinking about where food comes from and where food does not come from
  
• Green is good: everyone doing something and all have inconsistencies in their behaviour, the water issue has galvanised Australians, parents are the most passionate of all and want to instil in their kids responsible behaviour and understanding
  
• Most people are doing something, e.g. 66% of Victorian households are composting and vast majority of Australians are recycling, people can name what they're doing, however are they really? The next study will look at actual behaviour
  

Heartbeat Trends Gen Y Living Needs Study:

• Live in a very secular society
  
• Affiliation beyond inner circle – adults (Boomers etc) fear that language is being lost and the way Gen Y communicates is not real communication. For Gen Y it's about true communication in different forms. Need to remember that language has always and is always changing and will continue to do so
  
• E-filliation: Gen Y have affiliation 24/7 and is borderless, are emotionally powerful relationships, less guarded and more open in communication as won't see them face-to-face so feel comfortable doing this. Works in active and passive ways, in passive way remind Gen y that they are affiliated, confirmation that someone cares even if just a text message notification. It is quantity not quality that counts
  
• Easy friendships, online connections
  
• Questing (philanthropy) behaviour, armchair activism, support social issues
  
• Status: influence of American culture, look at change in the TV show 90201 – when it was on 10 (??) years ago it was an aspirational show, now it seems we can all live like that now; Gen Y a conspicuous generation, a move away from Australians egalitarian value – more hedonistic
  
• Release: an antidote, explosive release –vent frustrations and lose control. The "Soprano Syndrome" – kind of cool with a great lifestyle. They can be quite violnet
  
• What are their media choices?? Are pushing the boundaries to extremes. They love programs that push buttons on social sensitivities (Family Guy, South Park are examples of this)
  
• Constantly change and they are are masters of change
  

Heartbeat Trends New Women Clutterbuster Study:

• What is cutting through all the advertising for women?
  
• Let your guard down: women are sceptical about claims and very savvy and don't take it as face value. They love catalogues, therefore should be more magazine-like, women find them a compelling medium and soemthing they take ythe tim to read, are doing these behaviours online at Lasoo.com where you can search and compare catalogues, they want to beat retailers at their own game
  
• Engage in permission marketing: Brand Power® style is what they want
  
• News sells – if you have genuine news they will listen, cut to the chase (don't like Zoot Review® ads for example as not "authentic")
  
• Advice from a friend – word of mouth is a powerful influence on women, they now regard Sally from Brand Power® as dependable advice, not pushing and likeable, friendly, approachable (Lesson: choose a celebrity this way – someone that people feel if you run across them in the street they'll stop for a chat. They like nice people)
  
• Drop their guard when they are not the obvious target for the ad
  
• Love seeing active and involved men in advertising
  
• Family time: let go and make us laugh, ads should show us having fun as families and being together
  
• Family life is seldom perfect and should be shown as such in ads, women like to see "aspirational reality", need to show the mess, like to see stuff-ups and imperfections. The IKEA and Cottee's cordial ads were cited as good examples of this
  
• Inclusivity: single parents are the biggest minority in Australia and they turn off when seeing the "perfect family" in ads as it's not them
  
• Moral compass: they have strong moral values. However, don't want TV junk food ads banned as they see managing that issue as their role as mothers, the one area they did want looked at was over-sexualisation of children and body image
  

And that's when I had to leave – fantastic session guys!

Exhibitions about pets

This question from Susan Sedgwick, Historic Houses Trust: Hi Lynda, thank for taking the time to talk with me today. As I mentioned, the Historic Houses Trust is developing an exhibition Tails of the city: Sydney's passion for pets on the history of Sydneysiders and their pets to be shown at the Museum of Sydney from 13 December 2008 until 22 March 2009. Consequently I would be very interested to view any 'Dogs' audience research material that you can share and which might be relevant.

Hi Susan – we did some forward planning research several years ago now for a potential exhibition called It's a dog's life. We found that this topic really polarised audiences – you're either a dog person or you're not. The topic had very strong appeal for dog lovers and hopeful dog owners; then there are those who actively don't like dogs and there are others who are ambivalent. Parents also feared that an exhibition like this would fuel their childrens' interest, increasing pressure to get a dog when they don't understand the big commitment to owning one. Those that were interested had many questions and topic suggestions:

• What do dogs see?
  
• What can they hear?
  
• How does their sense of smell work?
  
• Explain their strange habits
  
• Explore their intelligence and psychology – how do their 'minds' work?
  
• Life from a dog's point of view
  
• See what they're capable of (working dogs, tricks, behaviour)
  

Ultimately, for the dog lovers they wanted to explore the human-dog relationship. They expected the overall mood of the exhibition to be light-hearted and humorous as dogs are quite amusing. However, when compared with the other topics we tested (such as ants, deep ocean, bog people) they felt it could give them nothing new, they are very familiar so what could the exhibition bring that was new? Finally, they thought the best thing about dogs is live dogs, so what else could make it exciting?

Susan, you have an interesting conundrum and much food for thought – it is a person's ingoing attitudes to pets that will largely determine their reactions to the exhibition. Personally, I dislike pets intensely and couldn't think of a more boring topic for an exhibition – but then I'm not your target audience (sorry all you pet lovers out there...)! By the way, the National Archives of Australia did a travelling exhibition about working animals called It's a Dog's Life! Animals in the Public Service and they may have done some evaluation on that – don't know who to contact there anymore though.

Challenging topics

I got this request via the VSG discussion list: Dear Colleagues, We have just put up the Hard Rain exhibition in the zoo. The exhibition is a United Nations Environment Programme partnered exhibition that graphically illustrates our collision with nature and defines the major environmental issues of the 21^st Century. Some of the images may be disturbing for our visitors and this is quite a departure for zoo culture. We really feel we should do some audience research on this and wondered if anyone in VSG could recommend a tried and trusted methodology, other than questionnaires which we don't want to do. We'd prefer unobtrusive observations and recording reactions, including conversations. But how to reliably classify and analyse? Many thanks, Maggie Esson.

Hi Maggie and congrats on what looks like an interesting exhibition. You're not alone in putting up controversial issues in an exhibition and certainly our research for the Exhibitions as Contested Sites project has found that visitors want to engage with museums on difficult and controversial topics. I don't think you should discount doing a survey/questionnaire – we have done several for quite disturbing exhibitions, for example death – the last taboo and Body Art, and got fantastic and thoughtful responses, and visitors were glad to be asked. For the Body Art exhibition we also had a large comments book where visitors posted their reactions which worked really well and we got some stunning answers. The power of this, of course, is that visitors also responded to others' comments.

As to recording and analysing conversations there is a whole book dedicated to this very subject (Leinhardt, Crowley and Knutson, 2002). I did a review of this in Chapter 3 of my thesis which can be found on my wiki (p.104-107), along with a section on observations (p.107-110). There has been some work using video-capture technology recording visitors' reactions to an exhibition on slavery which were subsequently published on YouTube, as well as in the exhibition. We had a discussion about this a long time ago on my blog which has various links to the project.

Good luck Maggie. My advice is to not worry at all about asking visitors to respond –you'll find, not only that they really want to do so, but that their responses will amaze and inspire.

The Museum I’d Like

From Brenda Siemers: Hello! I am a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee (U.S.) and am completing a thesis on teen programs in museums. I came across a blog that mentions the project called "The Museum I'd Like to Know". Is this a published study, and if so, how can I obtain a copy of it? It sounds very interesting! Thanks for your help!

Hi Brenda. The Museum I'd like study was conducted by Professor Susan Groundwater Smith for the Australian Museum in 2003 with a range of school students who were let loose in the Museum with disposable cameras. They were asked to take photographs of things that helped and hindered their learning, make a poster out of their images and present to the Museum. We wrote a paper for the British Educational Research Association conference and since I get so many requests for this have uploaded the conference paper to my audience research wiki and the presentation slides to my SlideShare site. Images of the students' boards are also online at my Flickr site, although they're a bit hard to see you get the gist of what they were saying, especially when read in conjunction with the paper.

Good luck with your thesis Brenda, feel free to share any findings with our community who are keenly interested in this topic.

What does lifelong learning mean for museums in a Web 2.0 world?

Here's background to the provocative paper I'm giving at the Museum Australia Futures Forum event in Canberra next week as part of the Learning for Life group.

In 1918 Benjamin Gilman's work, Museum Ideals of Purpose and Method, was published by the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. In one essay first published in 1916 Gilman Writes: '... an inordinate amount of physical effort is demanded of the ideal visitor by the present methods in which we offer most objects to his inspection. ... Indeed, we may even go further and claim that in some proportion of the objects put on public view in every museum the qualities for which they are shown are rendered wholly invisible by the way they are shown. They are so placed and in such lighting that it is a physical impossibility by any exertion of limb or eye to descry the particular characteristics to which they owe their selection for show.' (p.252).

Gilman illustrated his work with a series of photographs depicting the "ideal visitor" interacting with a series of showcases and in quite uncomfortable physical positions. I have images of visitors to many exhibitions in exactly the same positions! What has changed?

In 1901 the then Secretary of the Smithsonian, Samuel P. Langley, appointed himself Honorary Curator of the Children's Room as he felt that museums should be doing more for children. In a letter to himself accepting the position he wrote: 'The Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution has been pleased to confer upon me the honourable but arduous duties of the care of the Children's Room. He has at his service so many men learned in natural history that I do not know why he has chosen me, who knows so little about it, unless perhaps it's because these gentlemen may possibility not be also learned in the ways of children, for whom this little room is meant. It has been my purpose to deserve his confidence, and to carry out what I believe to be his intention, by identifying myself with the interests of my young clients. Speaking, therefore, on their behalf and as one of them, I should say that we never have a fair chance in museums. We cannot see things on the top shelves, which only grown-up people are tall enough to look into, and most of the things we can see and would like to know about have Latin words on them which we cannot understand: some things we do not care for at all, and other things which look entertaining have nothing on them to tell us what they are about. ... We think there is nothing in the world more entertaining than birds, animals, and live things; and next to these is our interest in the same things, even though they are not alive; and next to this the same things, even though they are not alive; and next to this is to read about them. All of us care about them and some of us hope to care for them all our lives long. We are not very much interested in Latin names, and however much they may mean to grown-up people, we do not want to have our entertainment spoiled by it being a lesson.' (quoted in Skramstad, 1999, p.113-114).

We still hear today from museum folk who despair at having children running loose in our exhibitions, and we still have many exhibitions that are not designed for them, despite having content that they are keenly interested in.

Valerie Beer's 1987 Curator paper, Great Expectations: do museums know what visitors are doing?, found that museum staff consistently over-estimated the time visitors would spend in an exhibition and that staff don't expect visitors to read labels. She also found evidence that: 'Variety, not quantity, appears to be key.' (p.213). Beer also mentioned that often we assume that it is the visitors' behaviour that needs to be changed, and suggested that we '... examine our assumptions that visitor behaviour should be changed' (p.213). How many times have we sat in project team meetings where we talk about how we are going to direct the visitor's experience toward what we want to tell them, not what they would like to experience and know about?

Mike Ellis and Brian Kelly in their paper, Web 2.0: How to Stop Thinking and Start Doing: Addressing Organisational Barriers, stated 'Web 2.0 puts users and not the organisation at the centre of the equation. This is threatening, but also exciting in that it has the potential to lead to richer content, a more personal experience'. The lines between the web and other forms of learning are blurring and will need to be carefully considered by museums when thinking about what lifelong learning really means.

My provocative paper at the Futures Forum will address these issues and more – I'll post my notes after I give the talk otherwise no one will turn up to hear me!

“Classifying” physical and online visitors and reflections on ‘flow’

Gave a paper at Museums and the Web 2008 looking at some of the ways on-line users have been classified. Again, when at the Museum of the Confederacy we were talking about on-line users and I got to thinking about some of the ways we have "classified" physical visitors and could they be applied to the on-line user as well? I was reminded of something that George McDonald (I think it was) said some time ago about visitors being streakers, strollers and students, which has many resonances with both physical and on-line audiences. George Hein, in his 1998 book Learning in Museums, reported on the following ways that visitors had been grouped (which is useful to re-visit at this time):

Higgins (1884)

• Students
  
• Observers
  
• Loungers
  
• Emigrants
  

  Wolf & Tymitz (1978)
  

• The commuter – use the hall to get from one entry point to the exit
  
• The nomad – casual visitor
  
• The cafeteria type – interested visitor who treats museum like a cafeteria as they search for objects or exhibitions of interest
  
• The VIP – very interested person
  

  Falk (1982)
  

• Serious shoppers – come with a clear predetermined notion of what want to see
  
• Window shoppers – come "to do" the museum
  
• Impulse shoppers – discover one or more exhibits that are interesting and become more engaged than first planned
  

  Veron & Lavasseur (1989)
  

• Ants – move methodically from object to object
  
• Butterflies – move back & forth, alight on some displays
  
• Grasshoppers – chose specific objects and hop from one to the other
  
• Fish – glide in and out of exhibitions with few stops
  

Mia Ridge in recent a blog post suggests we could help visitors lose themselves more so than we do now. While she was talking about on-line audiences, the principle is totally the same for physical visitors. I did find in my doctoral study, however, that we are all different (no surprise there!) and that some love getting lost while others want to get in and then out quickly with what they need and that these preferences are fluid. It's all related to what Csikszentmihihalyi and Hermanson suggested that if a museum visitor was both interested and engaged in an exhibition they would be ready to experience an intrinsically rewarding, optimal experience, which they called flow '... a state of mind that is spontaneous, almost automatic, like the flow of a strong current. ... In the 'flow' state, a person is unaware of fatigue and the passing of time - hours pass by in what seems like minutes. This depth of involvement is enjoyable and intrinsically rewarding.' (1995).

Reflecting on all this I still think the framework of streakers, strollers and students is something worth further thought for both the physical and online experience, coupled with an understanding of the power of the 'flow'...

Getting public response to redevelopment plans

This from Marian Steinberg, TMAG: Thanks for your earlier help. I'd send this directly to your blog, but can't figure out how! The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery are going to be putting on a small exhibition of the approved master plan for TMAG's redevelopment project. We're planning to use this as an opportunity to involve our visitors and get some feedback from them at the same time. We have in mind a very brief questionnaire (perhaps both using a computer and offering a paper version for those not comfortable with computers). The focus will be twofold: how they reacted to the Master Plan (and the physical model) and what they would like to explore at the new TMAG. Has anyone out there done anything similar?

Hi Marian and sorry it's hard to post to the blog. By sending me an email as you did I can turn it into a blog post for you – all part of the service! Now to your question. We did a small exhibition of our Master Plan about 18 months ago and left a couple of lovely big art books for visitors to use to make their responses. What we found was that they did wonderful drawings of their museum experience (which was fine) and very minimal comments (apart from some staff grunts). The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto did a similar study for their redevelopment and used comment cards in a small exhibition about their future plans. Images are below – they said it worked really well for them (this was pre-internet of course – they may do it differently now, who knows?). Other methods I know of that have worked well is using post-it notes placed directly onto the plans which is a good way to help visitors engage with the plans plus each other. You can collect them at the end or during the day to see what themes are coming out. I don't know that computers are the best way to go – they are hard to arrange and only appeal to a few – sometimes old fashioned pen and paper is the answer! I also re-purposed (J) a nice technique from the Leicester University study of school students and museums, it was merely a large bubble on a page asking visitors to draw their response to an exhbition. Maybe you could have something like that but with the prompting question – what would the TMAG of the future look like? Also, why don't you use your 159 TMAG Facebook group members? You might be able to get comments that way? This paper from the folks at the Canada Science and Technology Museum Corporation can help point the way.

Good luck Marian and keep us posted of developments.

ROM feedback room
ROM feedback comment cards
ROM feedback room plans and text
ROM feedback room - plans

African Impressions exhibition feedback form

What do visitors want to know about objects??

Spent a few interesting days with the folks from the Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, VA. We spoke about the kinds of questions visitors have about objects. Across a few studies now I have found rather consistent questions that keep arising for natural history and anthropological objects.

From natural history specimens people want to know:

• What is it?
  
  • scientific name
    
  • everyday name/description
    
• Where did it come from:
  
  • and when was it found
    
  • distribution
    
• The 'museum' things:
  
  • how is it preserved
    
  • why is it in a museum? what is it used for?
    
  • is it real?
    
• What is it related to that's familiar to me?
  

From anthropology objects they want to know:

• What is it made of?
  
• How is it used?
  
• What is it used for?
  
• How often is it used?
  
• What is the symbolism of it?
  
• How old is it?
  
• Is it still used today? If not, what is?
  
• Who were/are the people and what are their stories?
  

Madge showed me a document she had worked on for an art museum that had also looked at this issue. The Harvard MUSE project (Museums United with Schools in Education) suggested a framework for classifying (and therefore writing labels about) artworks which I think translate across a wide range of museums:

• Logical – how was the object made?
  
• Aesthetic – how does it work together with other objects?
  
• Narrative – what are the stories surrounding the object: social, historical and personal (I would also add perhaps scientifically for natural history objects)?
  
• Foundational – what are the big philosophical questions that place the object within a context?
  
• Experiential – what can be created in response to looking at the object (I would also add what new information, connections and meanings can be made in response to the object)?
  

While all the above are useful as ways of thinking about placing objects in physical exhibitions, they also have relevance I believe to how a museum might "display" their object online via their websites or through Flickr – perhaps a set of guiding principles??

Measuring “success” in the on-line environment

Been thinking quote a bit about this topic as we go into rebuilding the Museum's website. When doing my doctorate came across a quote that nicely encapsulates the focus we should be having: not asking how many people visit, but how valuable are their visits (reference to follow – can't lay my hands on t at the moment).

In our Museums and the Web paper Angelina and I look at different ways on-line users have been classified, and report on studies at the Australian Museum that have attempted to unpack these findings further. Seb Chan's paper, Towards New Metrics of Success For On-Line Museum Projects, argues for a more holistic way to look at on-line visitation, using new tools and broadening the segmentations first proposed by Peacock and Bronwbill.

My Museum colleague, Russ Weakley, set out some ideas about ways to measure visitor engagement with our new website which seem to be quite useful on a broader scale. Here's some text from an email he sent about this issue:

We need to look at methods that measure quality rather than quantity. We may have 2 million visits a year (for now), but how many were satisfied? How many got what they wanted. How many engaged? ... More importantly, we will soon be focussing much more on HOW people are using the site and if we have made any financial gains, not how many people visit. This means looking at things like:

- how many comments?
- how many tags?
- how many discussions between users?
- how many questions have users answered for themselves?
- how many images have users uploaded?
- how many members do we have?
- how active are these members (do they join and never return)?
- how many people are being converted from free to paid membership!!!
- how many products have been sold?
- how many event pages have been visited due to site-wide advertising?
- how many real donations have been made via the website and why?

Russ also pointed out that we need to go beyond comparing ourselves to other museums and galleries to looking at how we compare to sites like Wikipedia, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc. More importantly, is how we compare to other sites that are producing similar nature focussed content (for our Museum) within the commercial and private sector.

So, much food for thought and I'll be keeping my eye on this one.

Beginning audience research

This from my dear ex-Museum colleague Gary Morgan: Dear Lynda. I am at a small cultural centre and museum in Malawi as a volunteer. I have set a research project on audience evaluation for one of the staff who wants to do research but has no training. We are assessing impacts of the museum on audience learning. Can you send any reprints you may have spare? We have nothing much on audience evaluation or museum learning other than what I have been able to get off the web. Our address is KuNgoni Centre of Culture and Art, PO Box 41, Mtakataka, Malawi. We don't have email on site so I can't respond quickly over the web.

I think it's inspiring that a small, tucked-away place like that is doing audience research and on museum learning no less! Thought I'd blog my response so that others can add to my list (plus so I'd remember what I promised to send). I have also posted Gary's address so others can send things – I would imagine samples of surveys and questions would be the most help.

So, Gary I will send you:

• My doctorate – I have a spare marking copy. The literature review on learning (Chapter 2) is helpful as is Chapter 3 (method) and the appendices that have my questionnaires. These are also on my audience research wiki. I also just uploaded my Stage 2 questionnaire which I used to look at learning in more detail (both Word and pdf formats)
  
• Surveys from the MARVEL project that looked at a variety of ways to uncover learning outcomes
  
• Families and Museums research project report
  
• A copy of Paulette McManus's article: Towards Understanding the Needs of Museum Visitors (1991), which is a good resource about the types of questions that could be asked. It's also on my list of audience research readings which can be downloaded from my website here
  

Gary, there are a number of questions I have found work really well when looking at learning:

• The dinner party question: Can you think of one thing that you found particularly interesting in the XXX exhibition that you would be likely to tell other people about, say at a dinner party?
  
• The Project team question: This exhibition has been developed by a team of staff from across the Museum. What do you think were the main messages they were trying to get across to visitors?
  
• The MARVEL list (they answer this by Yes/alot; Yes/somewhat; No/not really; Not at all; Don't know):
  
  • I discovered things I didn't know
    
  • I learned more about things I already knew
    
  • I remembered things I hadn't thought of for awhile
    
  • I shared some of my knowledge with other people
    
  • I got curious about finding out more about some things
    
  • I was reminded of the importance of some issues
    
  • I got a real buzz out of what I learned
    
  • It was pleasant to be reminded and to learn more
    
  • It was all very familiar to me
    
  • Some of the things I learned will be very useful to me
    

Best of luck and please keep us all informed of how you're going.

Researching museum learning

This from Karen Koch in Germany: I got to your homepage by searching for museums evaluations and think it is a fantastic way to communicate with other people in this field. I am an education student from Germany and am writing my diploma thesis about a study done in 12 childrens museums (total 1350 kids). The topic is "Learning in children`s museums". We asked the children "what do you remember from your visit? What did you like best? What didn`t you like? What did you learn?" My work now is to investigate quality criterions about what children want in museums and how learning will be better working. (a basic example: a lot of the kids love to do something, so we need hands-on exhibits) In Germany there was no evaluation like this before even though we of course now about the theory in the children`s museums field. I am looking now for evaluations in this field to compare them. Unfortunately I haven`t found anything like that yet. Do you know if there was an evaluation like this in Australia, the USA England or somewhere else? It would really help me out a lot!

Hi Karen, I don't know where you've been looking but there is an enormous amount of material on learning in museums and quite a lot in children's museums. The best place to start is to read Chapter 2 of my thesis which can be found on my audience research wiki. The bibliography is very comprehensive (even if I say so myself J). Other good references to start with are the following:

• Leinhardt, G., Crowley, K., & Knutson, K. (Eds.). (2002). Learning Conversations in Museums. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  
• Paris, S. (Ed.). (2002). Perspectives on Object-Centered Learning in Museums. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  
• Hooper-Greenhill, E. (2004). Measuring Learning Outcomes in Museums, Archives and Libraries: The Learning Impact Research Project (LIRP). International Journal of Heritage Studies, 10(2), 151-174.
  
• Griffin, J., Kelly, L., Hatherly, J., & Savage, G. (2005). Museums actively researching visitor experiences and learning (MARVEL): a methodological study. Open Museum Journal, 7
  (Note: I have added this link even though it doesn't work because it should work soon I hope…)
  

The Association of Children's Museums has online resources about learning and their Hand to Hand publication has good articles about learning in children's museums.

Effective communication in developing new audiences

This from Evangeline Reed:
I am currently a graduate student at the University of Southern California. I am getting my Master of Arts degree in Communication Management, and I am in the midst of deciding on a topic for a research paper. I have always been fascinated with the museum/nonprofit-audience relationship, and I have a general sense of what my paper may focus on. Here are the abstract questions that I used to brainstorm my topic (in no particular order):

• What are the most effective forms and/or uses of communication for arts organizations to build and develop new audiences?
  
• What is the role social media plays in arts marketing and communication and how large is this role?
  
• How are arts organizations/non-profits communicating to America's youth in order to attempt to attract future loyal patrons and donors?
  

I will be focusing on young professionals between the ages of 22-34. As of now I am planning on conducting various surveys and research methods to find out how this demographic uses social media, what social media they use, and for what
purposes. These questions will hopefully lead me to find out if social media is a main channel for cause-related information. After conducting my research my goal is to have a fully developed resource of the most efficient forms of media in order to reach my target demographic.

Wow! What an important set of questions. Evangeline, there is quite a lot of work going on in this area. I'm giving a paper (with my colleague Angelina Russo) at Museums and the Web 2008 on this very topic (well kind of). The paper, From ladders of participation to networks of participation: museums and social media, discusses a variety of evaluations I have conducted. One specifically targeted adults aged 18-30, what they were doing online and how museums might want to engage them via social media. Due to (umm) "technical difficulties" the paper isn't on the M&W website yet but can be downloaded from my audience research wiki. In that paper we also report data on how Australian use the Internet and compares usage to the US, drawing on information from a Forrester Research study that Seb Chan blogged about on fresh+new(er).

My initial reaction to your methodology is to actually use the tools of social media to conduct your research. There are some very interesting things happening on Facebook with a range of museums and galleries trying it out as ways to both engage and promote themselves with current and new audiences. I'd encourage you to join up, become a fan/join some groups and see where it takes you. I also found quite an interesting group on another social networking site called ning. The Dallas Museum of Art Junior Associates Circle is "... an exciting, under-40 group that hosts an exclusive set of social events and educational programs throughout the year."

Also, just as I was about to upload this post, my colleague Janet sent me a link to what looks to be a very interesting review – Tools for Culture: The Resonance & Use of Online Tools in the Cultural Sector – which may be relevant to your study? I haven't looked through it in any detail yet.

And another article from the New York Times I was just sent (gosh I'm glad I didn't upload this post earlier) – Museums Refine the Art of Listening which talks about the new tools art museums in particular are using to listen to their visitors.

Evaluation, Research and Communities of Practice: Program Evaluation in Museums

This from Rama Lakshmi in India: Let me introduce myself. I am a journalist who writes about India for The Washington Post. My other big professional path is museums. I was a student of Dr Jay Rounds in St Louis, Missouri. And have worked at the science and history museums in St Louis and at the Smithsonian's Museum of American Indian. I am going to begin teaching the MA museum studies class at the New Delhi-based National Museum Institute (which is a deemed university). And I am going to teach visitor studies. Dr Jay Rounds adviced me to write to you. Could you kindly send me your article "Evaluation, Research and Communities of Practice: Program Evaluation in Museums"? I would like to read it and also have my students read it. Do you have it electronically? I am also interested in your web discussion forum. How and where can I access it?

I get so many requests for this paper that I decided to post it to my audience research wiki (you need to go down the page a bit). Basically, this paper "... outlines the development of audience research in museums, the context within which it operates, and describes the processes of audience research through a series of case studies drawn from the work of the Australian Museum Audience Research Centre. It is argued that the shift in museums from mission-led program development to balancing content and audience needs through a transaction approach requires a broader research-focussed agenda. While traditional ways of conducting evaluations are necessary and useful, to remain viable audience research needs to be more strategic, working across the sector in new ways and utilising new methods. How programs impact on users and facilitate learning about a wide range of key issues that museums are concerned with is a leadership role that audience research can take across both the cultural sector and other free-choice learning contexts."

Rama, to access other resources there is this blog (naturally!), my audience research wiki mentioned above, and a new social networking group I have started called Museum 3.0 where all kinds of people can discuss all kinds of things. I'll be teaching audience research for Museum Studies at Sydney University this year also and have set up a discussion group specifically for that – it would be awesome if you and your students joined us. Please feel welcome to join up – I'll send you an invite (or click on the Museum 3.0 link at the top of my blog).

Photographic research

This query from Elena Miles, Master's student studying at Nottingham Trent Uni in England: For my undergraduate dissertation I explored literacy in children's everyday lives by distributing disposable cameras to a group of 8 year old children and asking them to photograph what they deemed significant. I am keen to develop with this method of research for my museum studies thesis. I am thinking of something along the lines of providing 15 children with disposable cameras during a museum trip and asking them to document the highlights of their visit. Aside from the obvious issues of multiple gate-keepers and other sensitivities I was wondering if you knew of any previous research along similar lines. I am aware of the flickr application and of visitor response cards, but it is the photographic research which I would particularly wish to focus on.

Hi Elena. This is a fertile field for study I believe. We did a study in 2003 called the Museum I'd like. In that young people from a number of the schools across Sydney were introduced to concepts of learning beyond the classroom and subsequently photographed aspects of, and experiences in, the Museum that "helped" or "got in the way" of their learning. Photographs were assembled in annotated posters that were subsequently analysed across the sample in order to unpack the major themes. I don't have that report to hand but will add a summary here when I get to it. I can send you the paper given at the British Educational Research Association Conference about the project. Subsequent to this I uploaded photos of the posters to my Flickr site to see if that way of sharing would work. I have blogged about Flickr as an evaluation tool which is the third most read post on this blog and the one with the most comments. This is one area I intend to be looking at in more detail this year as I think it has great potential.

I had a look around all my research reference books this morning and couldn't find any that specifically related to using photographs. I did a quick Google and found some things:

• Creative documentation: Using photography as a tool in action research, Maya Haviland (2004)
  
• Visual ethnography: Using photography in qualitative research, Dona Schwartz (1989)
  
• Using Photography in Art Education Research: A Reflexive Inquiry, Iona Cruickshank & Rachel Mason (2003)
  

Elena, if you have anything to share, especially a literature review, I'm sure readers of this blog would be really grateful (well, I would be anyway!).

Locals visiting museums

After my excellent lunch the other day with Rob and Gillian, I got inspired (or was that instructed!) by Rob to re-visit his 2005 paper The "Museum Constant": One-third plus or minus a bit (Visitor Studies Today!, 8/2, pp1, 4-7). Rob reports on an analysis of museum visiting data collected over a 13 year period with Australians asking about their leisure activities, demographic profile and personality/self-description items. Generally it was found that around 35% of the Sydney population visit museums, with the interest in museums more noticeable in those who agreed with the statement "I am interested in abstract ideas", then followed by education level.

Four things struck me from that as we struggle here with thinking about our general exhibitions and program offer:

1. There is a limit to the audience for museums (knew that but good reinforcement)
   
2. The limit '... appears to be driven by people's preferences for conceptual cognitive activity' (p.7)
   
3. Although education is a strong predictor it acts as an enabler in people participating in the museum experience
   
4. 'It may be that museums in large population centres cannot hope to reach all the people in their catchment, but perhaps over time, they can reach about two-thirds of them' (p.7)
   

In my recent survey of what Australians do online, I found that while those who visit museums undertake the same kinds of online activities (such as read blogs, comment on sites, use RSS feeds, etc), they were more likely to use a wiki; listen to a podcast; tag a web page; comment on a blog; post a rating/review; participate in a discussion board/forum; read a blog.

I'm wondering in future whether these kinds of stats will be affected by the online world and the new kinds of relationships museums will have with their audiences that visit them both virtually and physically? I'm becoming (surprisingly) more interested in how we then develop closer relationships in these aspects as we our rebuild our website and deeply think about our physical offer. To me, the conceptual aspects that Rob talks about are ripe for the picking in those who will interact with us online too.

Maybe time for some targeted research in this area??

Using Flickr as an evaluation tool

Check out the Flickr audience research site where childrens’ drawings of the African Impressions exhibition are stored. I’m experimenting with using these kind of sites as extra evaluation tools. Thanks to Ariel for doing all the scanning for me.

Any feedback welcome...