Collaborative Exhibitions and Visitor Reactions: The Case of Nitsitapiisinni: Our Way of Life

Collaborative exhibitions built by aboriginal communities and museums often seek to reposition aboriginal peoples as the authors and experts of their cultures, and to assert their active and continued presence in the contemporary world. This article explores the impact of collaborative exhibitions on museum visitors' experiences and their potential to reshape the public's perception of aboriginal peoples. Interviews conducted with visitors to Nitsitapiisinni: Our Way of Life, a permanent exhibition created by Blackfoot Elders and museum staff at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, demonstrate that museum visitors rarely recognized the extent of the collaboration, and thus rarely equated Nitsitapiisinni with concepts of self‐representation or self‐determination. However, other messages were successfully communicated to museum visitors, namely the impact of colonialism, the efforts to revitalize Blackfoot culture, and the importance of Blackfoot spirituality. This study provides some interesting insights about public perceptions that will help promote deeper reflection on the issues surrounding collaboratively developed exhibitions and the first‐person authorship of First Nations cultures.     

Cueing the Visitor: The Museum Theater and the Visitor Performance

There are an estimated 17,500 museums in the United States. If people think these institutions are pretty much the same once you get inside or that the differences between them are unimportant, it might be hard to persuade them that all 17,500 are needed. Exhibitions can have great transformational power; why don’t they exercise that power more often? Have museums not fully understood exhibitions as a medium? Have we not devoted enough attention to the full repertoire of visitor feelings? Have visitors been telling us this and we have failed to listen? For many people, museums play many roles in their lives; for most others few or none. How can this be? “Museum‐adept” visitors seem to prize museums as theaters in which their own emotional and spiritual journeys can be staged, but what about the non‐museum‐adept? Can the museum‐adept teach us how to realize our medium’s full potential?     

Using Barbie Stories To Develop An Understanding of Polysemy and Encoding/Decoding

Courses: Media Studies, Gender and Communication, Communication Research Methodologies

Objectives: Students will develop a complex understanding of the critical/cultural media studies concepts of “polysemy” and “encoding/decoding” used in audience research and apply their knowledge of these theories in writing.     

Understanding Technology Adoption Through Individual and Context Characteristics: The Case of HDTV

Technology adoption research has a tradition of using and improving Davis' (1989) “Technology Acceptance Model” (TAM) and extended versions of it. This article suggests a break with this tradition by showing that the TAM is limited in its understanding of technology adoption. Two alternative approaches are proposed that focus on the role of knowledge and user-technology match, and on the role of temporary dynamical contexts in the process of adoption decision-making. Together with the TAM, both approaches were empirically tested and compared to the TAM by incorporating them in a questionnaire regarding the adoption intention of HDTV in the Netherlands. Results show that the constructs of both approaches show significant relations with the respondents' adoption intentions of HDTV and, together, offer a good alternative to the TAM. This result can be seen as a basis for more future research that uses technological and contextual factors as a starting point for adoption research. Using this starting point will contribute to a better understanding of future technology adoption processes.     

高校图书馆网站读者访问状况计量统计初探

从高校图书馆网站访问计量统计现状意义入手，通过高校图书馆网站读者访问状况计量统计指标，阐述高校图书馆网站访问计量统计的实现方法。     

Behavior vs. Time: Understanding How Visitors Utilize the Milan Natural History Museum

Abstract To evaluate visitors' use of the exhibitions and the communication strategy of the Milan Natural History Museum, we compared results gathered with two methods, based respectively on the timing of visitors and on the unobtrusive observation of exhibit‐use behaviors. We collected data from a sample of 100 groups of visitors (not guided), randomly selected at the museum entrance. We recorded the following data for each group: halls visited, length of stay in each hall, any kind of behavior showing visitor/exhibition interaction and the displays where interactions occurred. The study shows that visiting time does not give enough information about the actual use of exhibits by the audience. The investigation of visitor/exhibition interactions revealed itself to be the most usual method to describe the visitors' use of the exhibitions. The most important factor influencing visits to the Milan Natural History Museum is the communication technique used in the exhibition areas.     

叙事博物馆学:再议观众研究的质性方法

在博物馆观众研究以及相关效益评价中,定量方法已经成为主流甚至主宰,而叙事性的博物馆学方法却被日益边缘化。叙事(narrative)是人类的群体属性,叙事博物馆学更关注“可感知的历史”,它可以是一个故事,也可以是一首歌、一则笑话、一个理论、一条注解或一项计划。每一个个案故事可被感知,能够激起情感共鸣,并可以像“病毒”一样通过日常交流在公众中传播。叙事博物馆学不同于博物馆叙事,它是基于平民化和日常化的观众叙事,是一种新的方法学和认识论。     

Motivational Factors and the Visitor Experience: A Comparison of Three Sites

Museums, art galleries, botanical gardens, national parks, science centers, zoos, aquaria and historic sites are important public learning institutions. The free‐choice learning offered in these settings is closely linked to visitors' intrinsic motivation, making it important to understand the motivational factors that impact on visitors' experiences. This paper presents data from a questionnaire administered to visitors at three sites: a museum, an art gallery, and an aquarium. Similarities and differences among the sites are reported in relation to visitors' expectations, perceptions of learning opportunities, engagement in motivated learning behaviors, and perceptions of the learning experience. The importance of learning to museum visitors and the unique opportunities and challenges of the museum in relation to other educational leisure settings are discussed. The authors argue that the study of motivational factors might contribute to the development of a common theoretical foundation for interpretation in museums and other informal learning settings.     

What the Zoo Should Ask: The Visitor Perspective on Pro‐wildlife Behavior Attributes

Abstract Zoos have some choice about which pro‐wildlife behaviors to ask their visitors to do, but with this freedom comes the difficult task of choosing behaviors that are appropriate, effective, and that do not affect visitors’ experiences. This paper presents attributes of pro‐wildlife behaviors that emerged from self‐completed questionnaires administered to 114 zoo visitors. Questions sought to elicit attributes that visitors felt should be considered in the behavior selection process. The results say that behaviors should: have an on‐site option; be new, or if known, include new learning that underpins why they are needed; be easy to do; and have a clear link between the behavior and how it helps wildlife. Respondents also made comments about specific behaviors as well as how behaviors should or should not be requested. We suggest that visitors’ perspectives be incorporated into pro‐wildlife behavior selection in zoos, and we propose that these findings may be relevant beyond zoos.     

Experiencing Exhibitions: A Review of Studies on Visitor Experiences in Museums

Abstract This article reviews empirically oriented studies from the United States and Europe concerning visitor experiences in museum exhibitions in order to pinpoint similarities and differences among them. In the last 20 years, only a few scholars have tackled this research question in multifaceted empirical ways, although some of them have done so extensively. By comparing theoretical and methodical issues, as well as important results, we are able to outline several analytical building blocks that compose a complex framework of visitor expectations, experiences, and outcomes. Gathering credible data on experiences of visitors in exhibitions or museums, a method dating back to the tracking records of Robinson (1928) , is an ongoing challenge for the empirically inclined science of museum studies. Social scientists at universities and museums have been asking for 20 years: What are the findings regarding factors, structures, and consequences of exhibition experiences? Where are the blind spots? Which questions should be researched?     

Understanding Academic Information Seeking Habits through Analysis of Web Server Log Files: The Case of the Teachers College Library Website

Transaction logs of user activity on an academic library website were analyzed to determine general usage patterns on the website. This paper reports on insights gained from the analysis, and identifies and discusses issues relating to content access, interface design and general functionality of the website.