This paper describes the use of front-end evaluation to guide the development of plans for a community museum. In 1995, the fifty-year old Fort Collins Museum received a grant to create new permanent exhibits and educational programs as well as a collection initiative for obtaining donated artifacts from community residents.
In this paper, James Jensen of Ottawa's National Museum of Science and Technology (NMSTC) discusses a case study that provides guidance on how to integrate "effective market research" into museum management and decision making. Jensen discusses how NMSTC has successfully adapted to a market driven model of operation.
In this article, Carol Scott, Evaluation and Visitor Research Coordinator at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, provides a brief overview of evaluation and visitor research efforts in Australia. Scott establishes the context for the practice of evaluation and visitor research in Australia and identifies the indicators that point to an emerging field with important significance for museums in the area.
In this article, Gillian Savage of Environmetrics (Sydney) discusses exhibit planning and research efforts for the development of the Visitor Center at the Australian Institute of Sport.
In this article, Leonie J. Rennie and Terence P. McClafferty, researchers at Curtin University of Technology in Western Austalia, discuss their efforts to study how young children use interactive exhibits designed from 3 to 7 year olds. The authors analyze play and its relationship with learning.
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Leonie J. RennieTerence P. McClafferty
In this article, Lynda Kelly, Evaluation Coordinator at the Australian Museum, discusses the importance of titles in developing exhibitions in museums. Kelly cites evaluation studies at the Australian Museum for five exhibitions and key findings from these efforts.
In this article, Lynda Kelly, Evaluation Coordinator at the Australian Museum, discusses the challenges of exhibit evaluation and visitor research for audiences of and exhibits about indigenous peoples. In particular, Kelly discusses the evaluation work associated with the "Indigenous Australians: Australia's First Peoples" exhibit.
In this article, Ilze Groves of Questacon, Australia's national interactive science and technology centre, discusses the museum's efforts in 1996 to evaluate a group of sixteen prototype hands-on exhibits. This study involved visitor observations and interviews.
In this article, Judith Gleeson, of the Communication and Language Studies Department at Victoria University of Technology in Melbourne, discusses the role of narrative discourse in the museum experience and evaluation. Gleeson sites a study through the Australian Woman's Weekly that analyzed letters from people featuring narratives of why they visited museums.
In this article, Gillian Fuller, Communications Consultant and Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, argues how semiotics--the systematic study of meaning making---can influence exhibit evaluation and visitor research.
In this article, Linda Ferguson, Audience Advocate and Evaluator at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, discusses how the Memorial represents "the enemy" in its galleries in a way that meets the varying needs of their diverse audience. Ferguson shares results from a front-end evaluation study aimed at tackling this issue.
In this paper, Elena Pol and Mikel Asensio of the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid discuss their research about how visitors perceive different kinds of artistic representations and which elements they interpret from masterpieces. The authors provide an overview of their work in this area, including three studies about artistic style.