Visitor response to taxidermy displays

This from Becky Hitchens: I am a student at Durham University in the UK on the MA Museum and Artefact Studies program and for my research paper I am looking at the public reaction to taxidermy mounts. I have been doing a lot of visitor research in museums in the UK and wondered if the situation and responses were similar in Australia. I could not find any information on your web-site as to whether or not you held a collection of taxidermic animals and if so whether you used them. I wondered if you had received any visitor comments, positive or negative, about the use of taxidermy specimens in the displays? Also, did you do any visitor research prior to redisplaying the gallery or any evaluation of displays since? My research has generated that there has been a shift away from viewing taxidermy as obsolete relics of colonialism, towards a more positive reaction to taxidermy and that few visitors are disapproving of their use. It would be interesting to see if your experiences correlate with this. I would appreciate any information you could give me. Thanks for your time.

Becky this is a very interesting question. Natural history museums are traditionally associated with taxidermy mounts. Some f my happiest and longest lasting memories of museums (especially the Field Museum, Chicago and the Natural History Museum in New York) are the beautiful displays of a variety of stuffed animals in stunning poses. Apart from their value in learning, the aesthetic value should not be forgotten.

Information I have gathered about specimens comes from the Uncovered: Treasures of the Australian Museum exhibition we had in 2004. The exhibition focussed on why, how and what the Museum collected, through detailing the stories, images and voices behind some of the most important discoveries of the last 175 years.

A comprehensive summative evaluation was undertaken of the exhibition that consisted of two visitor surveys; one tracking study; an analysis of 20 visitor conversations; visitor counts and focus groups. The data that revealed how visitors engaged with taxidermy specimens came from the visitor survey and conversations.

When asked what they liked the most in the exhibition, some visitors surveyed commented specifically on the taxidermy displays (particularly the birds):

• Gruesome fascination of stuffed animals and pickled snakes
  
• The stuffed birds, they were over 100 years, fascinating that they are preserved so well
  
• Stuffed birds, I'm an amateur bird watcher
  
• Birds. They way they were presented you could actually see their feet
  
• The large lobsters. The size is tremendous
  
• Birds. I consider it's important to have taxidermy displays on show
  

Another interesting finding emerged from the conversation data. Minda Borun's research with family visitors to museums has shown that exhibits that enhanced conversations were multi-sided; multi-user; accessible to all in the group; encouraged multiple outcomes; used a variety of modes for communication; were readable and relevant to visitors' lives. In our study, these exhibits were characterised by familiar and unfamiliar specimens; specimens that were obviously dead; text that asked a provocative question; where visitors could make connections to their lives; specimens that were considered a bit weird; and specimens that were tiny, prompting visitors to ask how did they discover these. Specific exhibits in Uncovered that both enhanced visitor conversations and were taxidermy-related were:

• birds section—particularly the cases of large dead, stuffed birds that encouraged visitors to talk about the practices of museum taxidermy and collecting
  
• frogs/geckos displays—massed display of frogs and geckos in liquid enabling visitors to see the whole specimen
  
• possums/echidnas—exhibited many different examples of possums and echidnas, some familiar and many not
  
• bats—one of the first displays encountered when entering the exhibition
  

Finally Becky, in 2005 the Natural History Museum in Washington and did a study of visitor responses to their new mammals exhibition. I did a review of this exhibition on ExhibitFiles and the actual evaluation report is here on the Smithsonian website.

Connection Generation

Connection Generation is the first book written by Iggy Pintado. Connection Generation is a study of how connectedness affects our place in society and business and the challenges and opportunities this compelling development presents. As the Amazon Editorial Review says:

"We're all connected at some level. Whether you're a student, teacher, business owner, corporate professional, entrepreneur, manager, executive, or someone who is interested in how connectedness is changing our world, Iggy Pintado's Connection Generation is a must-read. A recognised leader in global connection technology and dedicated observer of societal and business patterns, Iggy believes that by understanding the attitudes and behaviours of individuals and groups, we can better manage the powerful link between communication and connection technologies to determine our individual and collective future. With nearly every facet of civilisation linked together, it is imperative that we understand how we connect into society and how this impacts on our capacity to adapt and grow. Consumer or leader, this book answers the vital question everyone is asking: Am I prepared for the lightning-fast connectivity changes taking place in the world?"

When talking with Iggy sometime ago we definitely shared views about how take up of social networking/connecting via Web 2.0 tools is not a factor of age, but of outlook. It is imperative in organisations, in particular, that we stop making excuses about how we cannot implement Web 2.0 thinking and actually do something about it. We have discussed some of these ideas on Nina Simon's Museum 2.0 blog: A simple argument for why museums and cultural institutions should care about social media.

Good luck with the book Iggy, and the Tweetblitz that is happening today. I'll be watching with interest.

after you have done the research

I was alerted recently of the importance of the virtues of having a well-organised system for reporting research findings, and making it available throughout the organisation.

I saw a summative exhibition evaluation report produced by one organisation that was so short in its shortcomings that it highlighted many things we take for granted. It fell short due to poor resourcing in terms of staff skills and time, and lack of useful software for data handling.

The 'report' consisted of a spreadsheet with summary data and graphs (mostly pie charts) with all kinds of errors. As a result, some of the data was misinterpreted when drawing conclusions for the specific exhibition. But even more important, there was no attempt to dig a bit deeper and look at audience sub-groups (teens vs adults; men vs women; people with children vs those without, etc.). And most limiting of all, there was no opportunity to compare the audience profile of this exhibition with other exhibitions, or with general visitors. And no opportunity to compare audience responses to various exhibitions or programs.

Seeing this, I see the role audience research can play in supporting organisational learning, not just day to day reporting.

What is needed for organisational learning? At least some of the following things:

• dedicated audience research specialist who champions the information and fosters use throughout the organisation
• good filing system that allows staff to identify past research and access it; this might be a catalogue with key words as well as titles, topics and dates
  
• standard report guidelines or templates that establish professional reporting
  
• reports include comparative data where relevant.

I picture a simple library of resources that builds over time.

Lynda has done a great job at the Australian Museum of establishing and fostering just this kind of resource. Maybe she can add some other points about her experiences in setting up systems that make research findings available across the organisation.

Gillian

Museum 2.0: A Simple Argument for Why Museums and Cultural Institutions Should Care about Social Media

Museum 2.0: A Simple Argument for Why Museums and Cultural Institutions Should Care about Social Media

NZ Conference post 4

Final day of conference today with focus on community, collections and innovation/technology.

I'm not blogging today – am tweeting insead and here's the feed. It's been a great experience and I even managed to buy some more wine goblets from the Tairawhiti Museum.

NZ Conference post 3

Spent an amazing day at Whangara Marae where we reconnected (or in my case connected) with Maori culture. A marae is a sacred Maori meeting place (see here for further information).

Reminded me how powerful the Maori language and culture is, as well as fun, funny and welcoming. Some points I gleaned:

• Need to understand the culture before you begin to build the building (or, in our case, the exhibition)
  
• People's life stories are interwoven with their work history
  
• Importance of genealogy in Maori culture
  
• Maori struggles for repatriation and recognition in museums mirror those of Australian Indigenous people
  
• Cultural objects need to be steeped within the context of their culture and kept warm
  
• What is the true version of truth?
  
• Need to remember that we who work in museums are there to 'serve the people' (not the other way round, something wroth being reminded of I think)
  
• Focus on the core business
  
• Need to have and maintain good relationships – if people don't get on nothing happens

NZ conference post 2

What are my views about what NZ sector could be doing (and should not be doing) in a combined visitor research program?

DO:

• focus on what you need to know, not what's nice to know
  
• always ask – what will I actually do with this data, if the answer is nothing or I don't know then don't do it!
  
• a smaller amount of research well, not a large amount superficially
  
• develop a couple of really good statements about what people learn/do/attitudes and use them over a time period (ala the Creative NZ model)
  
• maybe try self-complete or online surveys to save on costs?
  
• a pilot study in year 1 – see where it's taking you
  
• think carefully about what you want to get from a non-visitor study – is it worth sampling them? (not really IMHO)
  
• embrace the tools of social media – go where the people are (Flickr, blogs, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter etc) as this is where real opinions are expressed, plus it's free!
  
• use students (they are great) but think about how will the findings be integrated, accepted and used (this can also be the problem with using consultants – need an internal champion in the institution who will nag staff into using this stuff)
  
• ask – what do we want to focus on? Numbers and/or visitor experiences, learning and impact? (probably both)
  

DON'T:

• get bogged down in definitions
  
• just measure the measurable – find out what's important, then work out how t measure that, it can be done
  
• think about visitor research as a cost – think of it as an investment
  
• try and be all things to all people – a couple of key indicators in your regular surveys will do
  
• use SPSS...or any complex program thingo where you have to rely on someone else to provide the data (unless they're good and there's a genuine atmosphere of team work and sharing)
  
• forget the power of qualitative data – this is where you get the rich stuff you can talk to politicians/funders about
  
• expect that everyone supports museums – remember that us and our friends are not representative of the population, so what we like/do is not where everyone else is necessarily at (and usually are not!)
  
• be boring
  

Here's some resources for you:

• Measuring impact – some online resources
  
• What do visitors want when visiting a museum?
  
• What do visitors do when visiting a museum?
  
• Museums galleries NSW Audience Development Study and Australia Council reference
  
• Evaluation and Visitor Research Special Interest group Profiling Your Visitors project
  
• Australian Museum's All About Evil exhibition blog and Facebook – an example of innovative (and cheap!) audience research
  
• Museum 3.0 – a social network of museum professionals and a great resource for information and networking. Please join us...

culture – access – innovation: Museums Aotearoa Tairawhiti Conference

Kia Ora. Attending this conference in Gisborne as a guest of Museums Aotearoa (kindly sponsored by the NZ Ministry for Culture & Heritage – a big thanks). Program looks fascinating and really looking forward to catching up with old friends, meeting new NZ colleagues and sharing some great Gisborne wines.

Today am attending the Visitor Research workshop looking at the needs of institutions, regions and the sector across NZ and how we can develop a framework so museums can see where they fit in, as well as a lobbying tool. The workshop was attended by around 35 people discussing what they currently do and what they'd like to do.

So what am I doing here? Putting in my two cents worth! (but really helping them work out a plan from my experience I suppose).

Simon opened by talking about the bigger picture aspects of what's happening in NZ/Australia and raised the following issues:

• Standardisation
  
• Sharing information
  
• ICT – using it to gather info, share info and also looking at how visitors are talking about you on social networking sites
  
• Reducing costs (by sharing, using ICT)
  
• When/where to collect data
  

Some of what's happening across NZ:

• Te Papa: monthly surveys, motivations for visiting, as well as compliance reporting. Also mentioned key point that not only about gathering information but what we do with it
  
• Creative NZ: concentrate on performing arts as well as visual and digital arts. Survey called New Zealanders and the Arts (three-yearly survey, 2K visitors aged over 15 + booster samples with specific cultural groups) – attitudes, attendance and artists themselves to look at the health of the arts broadly. Found general support for the arts by NZers
  
• Massey University and non-visitor: defining this is hard, use social networks to define and research non-visitors (interesting idea, might pinch that one!), they can be eloquent about the purposes of institutions but when it comes to visiting it's about relevance, barriers (time and cost), some younger non-visitors felt too much emphasis on NZ identity and not broader, global issues (interesting observation, we have found this too)
  

Following general discussion, we then broke into small groups to look at four areas. Simon summed up with following key points:

1. Need to build on the academia/museum relationship and strengthen. This will help reduce costs and foster innovation
   
2. Need to focus on the impact of technology, both in user-generated content, reducing costs and as a way to disseminate information
   
3. Need to identify both basic, quantitative building blocks of information, as well as the ,more 'fuzzy', qualitative areas of research to be done
   
4. Overall a good start and will need to build on the forward momentum.
   

Notes from the session will be typed up and circulated via Museums Aotearoa. My next blog post presents a cautionary tale when embarking on a large program of sector-wide audience research...

Museums and Web 2.0

Giving a lecture tonight at UTS to a bunch of students about what museums are doing in the Web 2.0 area. Some points I'll make:

• Challenging authority
  
• Developing a sharing mindset
  
• Perpetual beta
  
• Engaging visitor experiences and developing communities
  
• Revenue raising
  
• 20% different, not 20% more
  
• Organisational change
  
• Informal learning; constructivism and the link to social media/online experiences
  

Some of the experiments we're conducting via the Engaging Social Media ARC grant at the Museum I'll discuss are:

• All About Evil exhibition development and blogging
  
• Facebook and museum 'characters' (Winny Saur and our echidna)
  
• Museum in a Box and professional development
  
• Using Flickr
  
• Climate Change exhibition/program and Twitter
  

I'll also reference the Mattress Factory; Brooklyn Museum; IMA and Powerhouse Flickr commons and object of the week.

I'll also look at how to develop a Web 2.0 mindset as explained in the diagram below, which I've been playing around with:

I'm attempting to do this lecture only using the web (i.e. I don't have a set presentation) – in this way we can explore what's happening together and discuss as we look at websites. I hope like hell the internet connection works!

Evaluating School Visits

This from Kwangsun Ahn, South Korea: I am working on my PhD dissertation. The topic is on the museum education evaluation system –evaluating school visits to historical museums (national and municipal museums of Korea). It would be an honour if you could suggest some guidelines. I am planning to read your dissertation and other research papers. How can I obtain a copy of your dissertation? If there is an online program please let me know. And also if you can give me a list of other research documents I should read, I would greatly appreciate it.

Hi Kwang and thanks for your query (and my sincere apologies for the time it has taken me to get back to you...). The best paper to start for this is by Janette Griffin (2004) "Research on Students and Museums: Looking More Closely at the Students in School Groups", in Science Education, 88(Supplement 1), S60-S70. Janette's 1998 thesis School-Museum Integrated Learning Experiences in Science: A Learning Journey also has a comprehensive bibliography and an interesting approach to school visits. I'm a bit behind in that literature I must say but there were some recent articles in Curator I remember seeing last year sometime.

Another good resource is David Anderson at University of British Columbia.

As to my thesis I have published it online on my Audience Research wiki.

Good luck, maybe other people may be able to respond with more up-to-date stuff.

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.

NDF Conference User-Generated Content Session

This was a really cool session. Some points I noted for us to think about for our new site:

• Te Ara
  caters to a traditional print-based audience as well as planning a play space for those who are more web-savvy
  
• Found the blog didn't generate as much two-way engagement as they expected or wanted – reinforces the idea that you have to work hard to create and build community
  
• I liked their simple interface for uploading stories (although they haven't had much success with this in terms of people uploading stories)
  
• Our Space set up a Flickr group months ahead of launch to generate media interest and content (and build community too?)
  
• Integrated an online and physical experience, an exploration and playful space with little instruction, which is new for museums (but based on constructivist principles which are not new!)
  
• Originally user-generated content not part of the brief (same for Te Ara, we need to factor this in)
  
• 'Generation C' – content creators
  
• Focus groups with 15-24 year olds to help develop the brief. What did they find? Its' all about me now (therefore needs to be instantaneous); young people are digital content creators (they want control and choice and ability to share); they are used to making stuff digitally; curators really need to lose control (become moderators and facilitators); must also have something the web can't deliver (i.e. the exhibition space must be able to stand alone)
  
• Applied principles of social networking sites to a physical exhibition
  
• Provide visitor voice and platform to interact with the museum, losing their centralised structure and control – how to reconcile this with role of protecting national treasures? (I don't think they're mutually exclusive)
  
• Are working with Maori now to get their involvement as a separate project
  
• Institutional paradigm shift where hosts now encourage visitors to play and explore; think about viral distribution of information and bit more sense of collaboration within Te Papa now
  

A great session nicely summed up by Angelina who also ran the Q&A, which meant I didn't have to do anything!

National Digital Forum Friday 28 November

Well, I've left INTERCOM and arrived in Auckland at the New Zealand National Digital Forum conference. Am facilitating a fascinating session looking at Te Ara – the Encyclopaedia of New Zealand and Our Space – a new multimedia space at The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. I have heard people (well, only Angelina!) rave about the latter installation so be really interested to see what the developers have to say.

In the afternoon I ran an audience research workshop and the slides from that can be found here.

Wasn't able to get to the first day of their conference (or indeed their conference dinner, probably a good thing given the way I feel today!) but you can get more information here.

Paul Gerhardt, Archive for Creativity (UK) talk:

• By 2010 all the info on the internet will double every 11 hours, YouTube has broadcast more hours of movies in past six months than three major networks broadcast between 1948 and 2008.
  
• Mentioned Video Republic report – Demos 2008 (this is a good read by the way)
  
• How has media shaped the ways we communicate? Emergence of writing meant a skills barrier – need to know how to read and write, now we have a plethora of products we can use beyond texts, including audio, moving images and sound
  
• The written word has been central to how we renew our cultures – why should it be different for moving images?
  
• George Bernard Shaw wrote about the importance of cinema in 1914
  
• Five forms of Digital Literacy
  
• Where is the low-hanging fruit? In public service broadcasting, given that we need to open up access to 100 years of moving images
  
• But – who pays for it? Who owns it? Who looks after it? Who has rights to distribute it?? The BBC worked on this in their Open BBC project, they established an advisory group form across industry, community, etc
  
• Public value and commercial value
  
• Showed an awesome film about the Open Archive and how to do stuff – can't find that exact film online but will keep looking. They did audience research all the way through the pilot and changed their program based on that. There is also a very interesting section – Teachers'' TV – with lots of online resources for teachers
  

Eight lessons from the project:

• Design a future proof system
  
• Coopt all stakeholders
  
• Prove the concept by conducting a pilot
  
• Open up to creator-generated content
  
• Develop infrastructure with other partners
  
• Demonstrate public value (plus two others I didn't get down in time)
  

But with funding restrictions and a new regulatory regime meant the project didn't go ahead – what a bummer! Good talk tho.

INTERCOM musings Part 4

Today’s the busy day for me chairing the morning plenary (including managing a scary video-conference thingy!) and giving a paper, so won’t be able to blog much. Also just realised that the paper I’m giving is not only unrelated to the conference theme but that I will be speaking a language that many people may not understand, resulting in a somewhat minor panic attack! Not helped by me not having a watch to actually time the speakers... I think it must be time for me to be getting back home!
Anyway, my talk was based on the paper Angelina and I gave at Museums and the Web 2008, so you can download it from there.

INTERCOM musings Part 3

Had a lovely breakfast in the redwood forest, although a bit cold it was still a great venue. Once we got back to the conference had the first plenary session.
Russell Staiff (UWS) The Challenges of Cross-Cultural Translation in an Age of Global Travel:
* Dilemmas when dealing with interface between tourism and heritage sites
* Chinese tourists are on the rise, they have visited 132 countries, 34.2 million Chinese travelled OS in 2006
* Tourism and museum/heritage places have become entangled entities – both positive and negative effects, it’s a complex relationship
* Destinations and itineraries: heritage sites get put on itineraries by others not the site itself (e.g. in the guidebooks), you suddenly become on the itinerary whether you want to or not – both in print and on the web and museums usually get prominent mentioned [although this is somewhat different for Sydney as seen as more of an outdoor city with a few icons]
* Work of sociologist John Urry on mobilities: are symptomatic of our modern social lives
* Need to understand the complexity of the cultural encounter, enormity of translating cultural knowledge to those who do not share the primary cultural affiliation of the place
* Examples given of Buddha Si Chum, Sukhothai World Heritage site and Michelangelo’s David: if you come from the west the former needs as much cultural translation as David would to an Asian tourist.
* Most Westerners get their cultural knowledge from Lonely Planet
* Discussed translation theory as way to think about what meanings tourists are making at these sites. Often we just literally translate the texts which can be unsatisfying. Therefore they tried a visual form of signage rather than reading dense texts. However still as one-way exchange couched in art history model
* Tourists are having a ‘wow’ experience but not one that they can comprehend! Despite the fact they don’t understand the experience they are still incredibly satisfied with their experience
* Appiah – Cosmopolitanism book, looked at making cultural differences legible rather than illegible by looking at shared values based on local, lived experiences of all humans, looking at commonalities
* Build content across what we all share
* The future of cross-cultural translation lies with digital technologies
Great and provocative paper Russell.

Fascinating session in the afternoon called Dark and Dangerous Tourism. Didn’t take many notes as my computer ran out of battery but have had a chance to reflect on what was discussed. Four speakers talked about museums/places that dealt with the Holocaust and slavery as well as museums in Cambodia and Colombia. We heard many facts and figures on visitation and visitors which got me thinking about a quote I quite like – “it’s not how many people visit museums but how valuable are their visits”. I hadn’t really heard anything from these sessions that looked at what visitors’ were experiencing and indeed even anything that looked at the front-end and visitors’ needs when visiting these often difficult and inaccessible places. Our research has found that visitors want museums to be more controversial and a bit out there as long as they have the capacity to comment and engage in a two-way conversation. The common thread here is the shared human stories and spirit that Russell talked about and I couldn’t help but think that taking a visitor-centred approach in this session may have added to what the speakers were saying. Anyway, here’s the link to Paul Williams’ book that I promised to post – Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities.

We then gave our session on visitor research and tourism. My paper will go on the INTERCOM conference website at some stage. It seemed to go quite well, given that we’d all had a 7am start we didn’t get out of the room until 6pm! I also managed to get in my two cents worth by quoting my hero Benjamin Gilman...

The long day was capped off with a lovely dinner, good food and an excellent NZ pinot. (oh, and the company was OK too!).

INTERCOM conference musings Part 2

After a rather extraordinary and moving welcome (and a very interesting and eventful journey to finally arrive in Rotorua!) we got straight into the conference theme museums, tourism, visitor experience.

Cheryll Sotheran spoke about the destination museum and national brand:

• Move from mass-market model of 20^th century to consumer niche market model of 21^st century – a holistic environment where economic, social and cultural are intertwined and interdependent
  
• Trends: decline of dominance of Western economies and rise of new Asian economies, with new kinds of values; move from a production to a consumption model which is market and values-driven
  
• Innovative-driven production providing services and products to values-driven markets
  
• What are these values? Sustainability, health and wellness, respect for authenticity, respect for culture and climate change
  
• We shod be providing experiences that have integrity and authenticity, that are memorable, have a narrative approach using innovative technologies with a welcoming customer service ethos
  
• Need to think about the new tourism demographic – demanding and needs-driven
  
• Does hyper reality make objects obsolete [not according to our research – they can work together in my view]
  

What should we be doing:

• Explore and understand technologies that exploit the gap between virtual and physical
  
• Play an active and leading role in world affairs especially in areas of sustainability, climate change and social equity
  
• No more 'business as usual for same old audiences', need to think more widely offering range of tailored experiences to a range of niche audiences
  
• Museums need to collaborate, while still retaining their strong individual brands but an underlying sharing of resources, identify meta-narratives and perhaps a value-based regional offer using themes rather than physical locality?
  

Thanks Cheryll for a really inspiring opening address.

Then had a fun hook-up via videoconference to Dennis Barry who designed the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the International Spy Museum. He discussed For profit business models for museums:

• Chose Washington for the International Spy Museum as it is a great tourist destination, 100,000 spies work there, chose site off the Mall as felt they could get tourists there
  
• Need to establish credibility in the world of espionage through creating an amazing board of experts and specialists
  
• A $40 million USD project
  
• Bought the iconic objects of their subject matter (mostly from the KGB who had a great collection of CIA and MI5 material!)
  
• A 750,000/year, $20 entry fee in city where almost others museums free, store is a huge success, 2 restaurants (museum owns and operates these), frequented by celebrities, voted one of top ten museums in Washington
  
• Feels you need to have a substantial marketing budget and long lead campaign. They had a lead of 18 months with stories in many, many magazines as well as usual media outlets of TV and news
  
• Produces 20% profit/year [so it can be done] and 4 million visitors so far
  
• Had to do lots of business cases and lobbying, realising they needed 400,000 visitors/year to break even – used private investors as no banks would lend to them and they have got their money back several times
  

Lessons from the 'for profit' museum sector to the non-profit – carefully picked topic, great location, great Board (and staff too I guess) and great objects interpreted in exciting and engaging ways with access to real people, while still keeping the exhibitions fresh and new.

The afternoon session was really hard to choose which to attend. A range of papers from across 11 countries demonstrates the diversity of the offer so I won't blog this but encourage you to go to the INTERCOM conference website to read the abstracts (and eventually the papers Greg hopes!).

INTERCOM conference musings Part 1

On the way to the INTERCOM conference dropped in on the folks from Auckland Art Gallery and gave a talk: What does the "visitor experience" mean for museums in a Web 2.0 world?, which I am also giving at the conference. We had a great discussion and they really got me thinking about the following:

• How do we integrate online with physical experiences? We talked lots about whether we provide web-based information within an exhibition or even within spaces in the museum. We also discussed the potential of mobile technologies, which is one area I'm particularly interested in as I think it is one we need to keep an eye on. I'm imagining in the future that this will be a way we can provide layered information for visitors, whether they download it direct from the web as they're in the exhibition (through using something like QR codes for example) or access it when they get home. We also need to be aware of people's attitudes to their mobile devices, as an earlier study we did at the Australian Museum (Educational websites) found that students in particular did not want to download what they saw as primarily "educational" material on to their personal phones/iPods etc.
  
• Who are the audiences we should be targeting? Although I reported on our studies with young people aged 18-30 and students aged 12-18 I still feel strongly that the segment we should be focussing on is older audiences. While the young are visitors of the future, I think the older demographic is both easier to reach, are interested in museums and have the propensity to be further engaged with museums as both online and physical visitors. We found this from our older persons study (where we targeted those aged 65+) but I would now focus on those aged 35+ who have young families/grandchildren or are cultural consumers. The other group I feel passionately about are audiences with disabilities who are looking for places that are interesting, welcoming and accessible and who are also positively disposed to the arts.
  

Anyway, thanks for having me and here's the links I promised:

• Museums and teens – blog post from Museums and Web conference
  
• Kelly and Russo Museums and Web paper – this was the basis of the talk I gave today
  
• Museum 3.0 – the social networking site for museum professionals, hope you join us
  
• Some information about QR Codes/mobile technologies from a discussion we had on Museum 3.0
  
• Twitter experimentation blog post (also on Museum 3.0)
  
• Telling Lives – the exhibition where visitors could upload their own responses
  
• Brooklyn Museum community programs and Shelley Bernstein's Museums and Web paper reporting on their Web 2.0 experiments
  
• Transformations in Cultural and Scientific Communication conference website – a great conference, really well-priced with an awesome range of speakers (well, if I do say so myself!).
  

Ciao for now,

Museum Learning Talk at Powerhouse Museum

Gave a talk at the Powerhouse Museum (PHM) today as part of their talks after noon seminar series. Was great to get back to the doctorate and remember why I got interested in this topic in the first place. My slides have been uploaded to Slideshare and chapters of the thesis are online here.

I co-presented with Helen Whitty from the PHM who gave a talk a titled Public programs: Snake oil merchants or Museum professional? Helen is always a great speaker and some points I took from her talk were:

• Experience of the museum not just the exhibitions
  
• 'Public programs are the links between the museum and its audience' (MacLulich, 1994)
  
• Look at not what the public program is but what it does – for example is it a destination event; a signature program; a fixed/ongoing program linked to permanent exhibition; or special programs linked to temporary exhibitions?
  
• Penfold, an early PHM Director, in 1939 was scathing about museums as 'dead places' and suggested museums should move to retail practices – he suggested that visitors should leave a museum having 'bought' something
  
• What do the public actually want from a museum? Helen spoke about findings from a PHM study which found that half of those surveyed wanted 'learning' and half wanted 'pleasure' in their leisure time
  
• Perceived dichotomy between education and entertainment is now an old framework, it's now about how we approach our learners and about putting our visitors at the centre (hear-hear Helen!! That's what I found in my research too)
  

All in all a good session and thanks for organising it Rita and Jana.

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!!)