John H. FalkRezensionen

The first book to take a "visitor's eye view" of the museum visit when it was first published in 1992, The Museum Experience revolutionized the way museum professionals understand their constituents. Falk and Dierking have updated this essential reference, incorporating advances in research, theory, and practice in the museum field over the last twenty years. Written in clear, non-technical style, The Museum Experience Revisited paints a thorough picture of why people go to museums, what they do there, how they learn, and what museum practitioners can do to enhance these experiences.

The first book to take a "visitor's eye view" of the museum visit when it was first published in 1992, The Museum Experience revolutionized the way museum professionals understand their constituents. Falk and Dierking have updated this essential reference, incorporating advances in research, theory, and practice in the museum field over the last twenty years. Written in clear, non-technical style, The Museum Experience Revisited paints a thorough picture of why people go to
museums, what they do there, how they learn, and what museum practitioners can do to enhance these experiences.

The first book to take a "visitor's eye view" of the museum visit when it was first published in 1992, The Museum Experience revolutionized the way museum professionals understand their constituents. Falk and Dierking have updated this essential reference, incorporating advances in research, theory, and practice in the museum field over the last twenty years. Written in clear, non-technical style, The Museum Experience Revisited paints a thorough picture of why people go to museums, what they do there, how they learn, and what museum practitioners can do to enhance these experiences.

The first book to take a "visitor's eye view" of the museum visit when it was first published in 1992, The Museum Experience revolutionized the way museum professionals understand their constituents. Falk and Dierking have updated this essential reference, incorporating advances in research, theory, and practice in the museum field over the last twenty years. Written in clear, non-technical style, The Museum Experience Revisited paints a thorough picture of why people go to museums, what they do there, how they learn, and what museum practitioners can do to enhance these experiences.

Museum culture, museum studies, museum visitors, visitor experience, reference, museum professionals, research, practice, theory, nonfiction

The first book to take a "visitor's eye view" of the museum visit when it was first published in 1992, The Museum
Experience revolutionized the way museum professionals understand their constituents. Falk and Dierking
have updated this essential reference, incorporating advances in research, theory, and practice in the
museum field over the last twenty years. Written in clear, non-technical style, The Museum Experience
Revisited paints a thorough picture of why people go to museums, what they do there, how they learn, and
what museum practitioners can do to enhance these experiences.

Museum, Museum Studies, Museum Professionals, Museum Theory,

The first book to take a "visitor's eye view" of the museum visit when it was first published in 1992, The Museum Experience revolutionized the way museum professionals understand their constituents. Falk and Dierking have updated the essential reference, incorporating advances in research, theory, and practice in the museum field over the last twenty years. Written in clear, non-technical style, T/he Museum Experience Revisited paints a thorough picture of why people go to museums, what they do there, how they learn, and what museum practitioners can do to enhance these experiences.

The first book to take a "visitor's eye view" of the museum visit when it was first published in 1992, The Museum Experience revolutionized the way museum professionals understand their constituents. Falk and Dierking have updated this essential reference, incorporating advances in research, theory, and practice in the museum field over the last twenty years. Written in clear, non-technical style, The Museum Experience Revisited paints a thorough picture of why people go to museums, what they do there, how they learn, and what museum practitioners can do to enhance these experiences.

Another handy reference for those dealing with interpretation and education in a museum setting. Dierking provides some excellent studies into museum-goers motivations and experiences, and every chapter ends with a summary and bibliography.

Since the mid-20th century, attendance at museums throughout America has dropped drastically, resulting in museums that cannot fulfill their educational missions and leaving museums faced with difficult decisions of how to balance stable futures with past methodologies. In this book, Falk and Sheppard propose that one reason for the decline of museums is that they are a remnant of the Industrial Age that has not aged well in the modern Knowledge Age. The authors present dynamic new business models for museums, models that focus on visitor experience and staff involvement as keys to a successful museum.

Although I know that museums must alter current operating models in order to survive in a weak economy, I did not find this book particularly helpful. This is mostly because I disagree with most of the authors’ fundamental arguments about what museums should do and be. I believe that in an age where people seem to prefer entertainment to education, museums need to maintain a high standard of learning rather than embrace the latest technological gadgets in order to draw a larger crowd.½

PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS FOR PERSONAL LEARNING
The book contains the results of 1994 Annapolis Conference that sought to explore how and what people learn in museums.
Big idea: Understanding even the most fundamental questions about learning in museums remains elusive and further research is necessary.
Strength: Foundational discussion of learning research theories.
Weakness: Lacks a practical component.
Key concepts: Learning is a verb, noun, process, and product. Museums are sites of informal learning. Constructivism: enabling students to make sense of concepts for themselves. Flow: common experiential state that is spontaneous and encourages participation when extrinsic rewards are absent.
Contents: What do we learn in museums; How should we investigate learning in museums; Establishing a long-term learning research agenda for museums; learning in interactive environments: prior knowledge and experience; Museum memory; Intrinsic motivation in museums: why does one want to learn?; The influence of culture in learning and behavior; Evidence of development from people's participation in communities of learners; Human-factor considerations in the design of museums to optimize their impact on learning; learning and the physical environment; Mucking around in museum research; The need for learning research in musuems; Creating an academic home for informed science education.
- David P

THE MUSEUM EXPERIENCE
Big idea: The museum experience is a synthesis of personal, social, and physical contexts that is continuously constructed by each visitor.
Strength: Readable compilation of visitor and learning research with many practical applications for museum professionals. Good annotated bibliography.
Weakness: Content neutral; fails to capture the spirit of the museum experience.
Key concepts: * Research data indicates that family groups are attempting to be model museum visitors but that they are frequently disoriented, overwhelmed by the quantity and level of material, and desperately trying to personalize the information they are processing, all within the context of the social interaction of the group. * Most people deal with information, particularly new information, in a concrete way; museums are uniquely suited to capitalize on this capacity. * Museum exhibits are often designed to convey abstract notions. This is an admirable goal but at the same time exhibits and labels would be more effective if they conveyed concrete information first. * The visitor’s view is not reductionist, compartmentalizing the museum in intellectual disciplines or exhibit galleries. The visitor’s perspective is that of a consumer of leisure-time activities. * Museum visitors do not catalog visual memories of objects and labels in academic, conceptual schemes, but assimilate events and observations in mental categories of personal significance and character, determined by events in their lives before and after the museum visit. * To make exhibits that facilitate learning, museum professionals should begin the exhibit design process by thinking about how the visitor might use the knowledge presented rather than thinking about what objects to display or what ideas to present.
Contents: Before the visit; during the visit; the museum visit remembered; a professional's guide to the museum experience.
- David P

[newly added - 09/08/19] - Studio North Library - shelved at : D754