DOI: 10.1111/j.2151-6952.2011.00100.x
© 2011 The California Academy of Sciences
]]>OI: 10.1111/j.2151-6952.2011.00085.x
© 2011 The California Academy of Sciences
]]>Restorative environments possess a combination of attributes that facilitate recovery from mental fatigue. Most previous research in this regard has focused on natural environments, but this paper explores the extent to which museum environments also provide access to restorative experiences. Visitors (307 tourists and 274 local residents) to a history museum, an art museum, an aquarium, and a botanic garden completed a questionnaire regarding the restorative qualities and benefits of the environment they visited. The findings indicate that for some people, museums are at least as restorative as natural environments. The paper contributes to the development of a theoretical understanding of museums as restorative environments and provides insights into the factors that facilitate and enhance restorative experiences. Such experiences have the potential to contribute to visitors’ well-being and satisfaction.
DOI: 10.1111/j.2151-6952.2010.00044.x
© 2010 The California Academy of Sciences
]]>George Brown Goode, a former Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian in the late 1880s, said that the nature of museum work is not only knowledge creation, but also knowledge dissemination, and, ultimately, learning: “The museum likewise must, in order to perform its proper functions, contribute to the advancement of learning through the increase as well as through the diffusion of knowledge” (1991, 337). Elaine Heumann Gurian noted that: “The use of the Internet will inevitably change museums. How museums respond to multiple sources of information found on the Web and who on staff will be responsible for orchestrating this change is not yet clear. The change, when it comes, will not be merely technological but at its core philosophical” (2010, 95). The catalyst for this change—and for accelerating the pace of change—is Web 2.0.
DOI: 10.1111/j.2151-6952.2010.00042.x
© 2010 The California Academy of Sciences
]]>Learning Science in Informal Environments chronicles the state of science learning in museums today. What is known about learning history in history museums? How does the practice of history in history museums stack up with this national report? The author presents one perspective on how the six strands of science learning might be adapted and applied to visitors’ understanding of history in history museums, in hopes of beginning an important conversation on this topic among history museum professionals.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has funded hundreds of projects that promote lifelong learning in all disciplines and types of museums and libraries, including museum/library partnerships with schools, universities, and other formal learning organizations. Learning Science in Informal Environments: People, Places, and Pursuits (LSIE) is a milestone in a continuing quest to understand and articulate the impact of informal learning experiences. Its recommendations identify significant issues for future research and practice, with implications beyond science learning. This article places the report in the context of previous and future IMLS work, including increased agency focus on—and resources for—research, evaluation, collaborative projects, and professional development.
Understanding visitors is a necessary and complex undertaking. In this article, we present K-means cluster analysis as one strategy that is particularly useful in unpacking the complex nature of museum visitors.
Three questions organize the article and are as follows:
To answer these questions, we present five steps that are vital to conducting a K-means cluster analysis.
We also present three cases studies to demonstrate differences among the results of three K-means cluster analyses and provide practical applications of the findings.
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