CONSTRUCTING CONNECTIONS: MUSEOLOGICAL THEORY AND BLOGGING LYNN BETHKE MASTER’S CANDIDATE MUSEOLOGY UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Museums are blogging. At this writing, there are more than fifty museum administered blogs worldwide and more than that number writing about museums. There are even some blogs specifically dedicated to the topic of museum blogging! But the topic of museum blogging is still largely untouched in accessible professional or museological literature, save for articles on how museums can begin blogging and strategies they can employ to boost the visibility of their blog online. While useful, these articles fall under museum practice and rarely acknowledge museum theory. From a museological perspective, it is important to understand why museums do what they do, not simply how they do it. Currently, museum blogging is being taken as a given by much of the field, as a practice that museums are and will be engaging in for some time to come. This part of the field has not taken the time to consider their practice in the literature. Much of the rest of the museum field is not yet sure about blogs. They wonder if blogging has any value for museums, or if it is just a passing fad. Now is the time to reflect on museum blogging. This paper asks if blogging is an appropriate practice for museums. To determine whether a practice is appropriate to museums, it is necessary to ground that practice in theories already accepted and widespread in the museological community. This paper synthesizes theories from the fields of communications, education, and public relations that are already applied to museum work and examines aspects of blogging in light of those theories. This paper offers the theories and examples from museum practice to illustrate them. By bringing together these elements, this paper will demonstrate that blogging is an appropriate practice in which museums can engage. DEFINITIONS A discussion of museum blogging is necessarily positioned at the intersection of museums and the internet. This section defines several key terms used in the body of this paper which may be unfamiliar to the casual internet user. BLOG (NOUN): A blog is log of the user’s internet (or web) experiences or of the user’s thoughts, experiences, and opinions as stored online. Blogs vary greatly depending on the author and the intended impact, but most blogs share several primary characteristics which include: “Reverse chronological journaling (format) Regular, date-stamped entries (timeliness) Links to related news articles, documents, blog entries within each entry (attribution) Archived entries (old content remains accessible) Links to related blogs (blogrolling) RSS or XML feed (ease of syndication)

Passion (voice)”1 Traditional blogs are usually text based, but there are also audio blogs (podcasts) and video blogs (vlogs), neither of which will be addressed in this paper. Blogs are often informal and in the first person. Examples of several well known blogs include: Instapundit,2 Boing Boing,3 and PostSecret.4 BLOG (VERB): To blog is to update a blog by creating new entries. Therefore, blogging is the act of doing so. BLOGGER: A blogger is one who authors a blog or writes a for a blog. BLOGOSPHERE: The blogosphere is the “world of bloggers: the World Wide Web environment in which bloggers communicate with each other.”5 WEB 2.0: Web 2.0 is a difficult term to attempt to define in a paragraph. More appropriately known as the social web or the participatory web, Web 2.0 is a buzzword for a suite of technologies which enable the many to communicate, collaborate, and share with the many. Web 2.0 can also refer to the aspect of community that is possible online through the use of these and more traditional software. Innovations associated with Web 2.0 include: blogging, wikis, podcasts, tagging, videoblogs, online social networking, and ratings. COMMUNICATION Communication is an integral part of what museums do.6 It could be described as the basis of everything that museums do. As institutions of learning, museums must communicate with the general public in order to achieve their educational objectives. At their inception as cabinets of wonder, museums communicated primarily through conversation; modern museums communicate primarily through book publishing, press releases, billboards, exhibit signage, and innumerable other methods which are from one to many. Blogging is the new weapon in the museum communication arsenal and it offers a return to the intimate conversation with the collector, among other things. This section examines approaches to museum communication, new and old. APPROACHES TO COMMUNICATION 1

Kathy Gill, “How Can We Measure the Influence of the Blogosphere?” (paper 2004), http://faculty.washington.edu/kegill/pub/www2004_blogosphere_gill.pdf, (accessed February 14, 2007).

2

Instapundit.com, http://www.instapundit.com, (accessed April 14, 2007).

3

Boingboing: A Directory of Wonderful Things, http://boingboing.net, (accessed April 14, 2007). PostSecret, http://postsecret.blogspot.com, (accessed April 14, 2007). 5 MSN Encarta Dictionary, s.v. “Blogosphere,” http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_701704686/blogosphere.html, (accessed April 14, 2007). 6 Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, “Communication in theory and practice,” in The Educational Role of the Museum, ed. Eilean Hooper-Greenhill ( New York: Routledge, 1999), 28. 4

During the Italian renaissance, cabinets of curiosity (early precursors of museums) allowed an elite few to catch a glimpse of the world of science, art, and curiosities, as well as of the strange and mysterious creatures and plants being gathered from all edges of the expanding map. Those lucky enough to gain entry into the cabinets learned about the collection through intimate conversation with the collector.7 As museums evolved from cabinets of curiosity to the public museums we know today, visitors grew in number and that conversation between privileged peers became a lecture. The collector (or curator or exhibit staff) began speaking to the visitor through publications, exhibit text, and lecture programming. The visitor no longer saw the collector and could no longer engage in that intimate conversation. The mode of communication into which museums fell over time is known as broadcast communication. Broadcast communication is communication from few to the many, from experts to the uninitiated. Broadcast communication is an example of the transmission model of communication. Key to the transmission model is the idea that knowledge is external to the receiver and that the bulk of communication is, for museums, from expert to novice, from curator to museum visitor. 8 The transmission model of communication is very useful in exhibitions and, indeed, is almost inevitable. However, another model of communication has gained preference in the past several decades. Recently, museums have attempted to recapture the era of conversation within museums through the use of the cultural model of communication. The cultural model of communication, also sometimes known as natural communication, is broader and more flexible than the broadcast model. Rather than understanding communication as the transmission of information from one party to another, the cultural model of communication understands communication as a process spanning a society and one involving the negotiation of reality.9 As such, knowledge is not a quantity that can be possessed by a singular entity; it is negotiated by the parties involved in communication. Whether or not one understands knowledge as constant or as produced by cultural interaction, the cultural model is useful to museums because the process is one of sharing, participation, and creation. When individuals are involved in the process of communication and not simply the end recipients of it, they are meaning makers who have power over the end message they accept.10 Put into action, the cultural model becomes networked communication. Network communication is defined by its interactivity. Network communication connects people, one to one.11 It is not a new phenomenon, although the advent of the social web, Web 2.0, has revolutionized the area. Network media can include letter writing as much as it 7

Paula Findlan, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 100. 8 Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, “Education, communication, and interpretation,” in The Educational Role of the Museum, ed. Eilean Hooper-Greenhill ( New York: Routledge, 1999), 15-19. 9 Ibid, 16. 10 Ibid, 17 11 David Holmes, Communication Theory: Media, Technology and Society, (London: Sage Publications, 2005), 10.

includes blogs although its current incarnation is focused around the social web. When museums move from a transmission model to a cultural model, they move from being an aloof institution, communicating from afar, to an institution with a personality, willing to have a conversation with its audience instead of handing them a press release. An increased emphasis on network communication within museums will not require that museums stop issuing press releases and publishing catalogs. Instead, incorporating network communication into the regular operations of museums can create connections with potential audiences the museum may have never known existed. MUSEUMS AND NETWORKED COMMUNICATION Network media, such as blogs, podcasts, and wikis have exciting potential to link museums with the world beyond their walls. Many museums have already discovered that important connections which are built by utilizing the power of the internet. One example is the Abomey History Museum in Benin, Africa. For many years the museum had been neglected and had fallen into disrepair under an unsympathetic government. After 1990 and the democratization of Benin, a revitalization plan was pursued. The implementation of this plan gave the museum a new life in at its physical site. The museum also developed a website to serve potential visitors and researchers.12 The website, as many sites did in 1997 and many continue to today, included a virtual guestbook in which website visitors could leave their name and comments. The museum may have expected a few comments from museum visitors. What was not expected by the museum was that 45% of guestbook signatories were from Beninese people living outside of Benin, connecting with their heritage and culture.13 The Abomey museum had, by giving its visitors a chance to speak, discovered that it served a much broader audience than it had initially imagined. The museum had the opportunity to respond and react to those comments; it had the chance to create a place of international community within the pages of its website. The extent to which the museum did so is not readily apparent, but the power of individual response is clearly demonstrated.

12

13

Historical Museum of Abomey, http://www.epa-prema.net/abomeyGB (accessed April 14, 2007). Anne Ambouroue Avaro and Alain Godonou, “The Revitalization of the Abomey History Museum and the Web,” Museum Internationa. 53.3 (2001): 56.

Figure 1. Abomey Museum Guestbook The Abomey Museum connected with a large and passionate audience by using software which allowed the visitor to talk back. When a blog visitor leaves a comment on a blog, that person is engaging in a conversation with the museum through the guise of the blogger. The blog post represents the beginning of a conversation and the comment represents a response. In this way, blogs approximate the cultural mode of communication. Conversation is a much more natural form of communication – before we were painting symbols on the cave walls, we were grunting to each other. When museums start conversations with the public, it is a unique form of communication between an institution and an individual. Blogging, in particular, gives the museum a voice in a way the building and its exhibits alone never could. Blog readers relate to a human voice more than they do to the often impersonal voice of the press release and exhibit text. Even when readers do not blog themselves or actively participate in the ongoing conversation, they may feel that they have developed a personal relationship with the blogger and, by extension, the museum.14 14

Nancy Van House, “Weblogs: Credibility and Collaboration in an Online World,” CSCW Workshop on Trust, http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/~vanhouse/Van%20House%20trust%20workshop.pdf (accessed April 12, 2007).

EDUCATION For much of their histories, museums have been primarily didactic institutions, providing all the answers for their visitors and expecting that information to be absorbed. Over the past 20 years, a change has occurred. Museums, especially in their educational programming, have recognized the work of theorists like Piaget and Vygotsky and have moved toward a more active approach to learning. Blogs have the potential to be much more than places to have a conversation; blogs can empower visitor learning by encouraging constructivist learning. Theories of knowledge and learning are analogous to the models of communication discussed earlier. Museums have long been places which fit into the didactic model of learning; lectures and texts were the primary means of conveying information. Didactic museums conceive of knowledge as external to the learner. The learner gains knowledge by the incremental building of information on information until all information has been imparted to the learner.15 The transmission model of communication requires a passive receptor in the same way that behaviorism does. Traditionally, museums have simply imparted knowledge to visitors through the exhibition of objects and interpretive signage, leaving it to the visitor to find ways to retain the information. But this has begun to change in the past several decades. Just as museums have begun to incorporate the cultural model of communication into their workways, so have they begun to adopt a new approach to education. The cultural model of communication involves the active creation of reality in the same way that constructivist models of learning involve the active creation of knowledge. Constructivist learning is currently among the most widely implemented models of learning utilized by museums. CONSTRUCTIVIST LEARNING Constructivist learning originates from the work of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. Piaget hypothesized that, as children grow and develop, they go through different stages of relating to and understanding the world around them. This theory caused a revolution in ideas about teaching and learning. If children go through distinct developmental stages, then rote learning and memorization will not be effective until the child is at an appropriate stage to accept knowledge in such a manner. This realization transformed childhood teachers from transmitters of knowledge into guides for a child’s discovery of the world.16 Piaget was one of the first to conceive of learners as important in the educational process and his work opened the way for others. Lev Vygotsky built on Piaget’s work by adding in the element of society. Under Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, a child will make observations about the world and then test those observations against the world, with the results forming the basis for the child’s perception of reality. Vygotsky maintains that social interaction is an important 15

George E. Hein, “The Constructivist Museum,” The Educational Role of the Museum, (New York: Routledge, 1999), 75. 16 Encyclopædia Britannica, s.v. “Jean Piaget,” http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9059885, (accessed April 12, 2007)

element not included in Piaget’s process. That is, a child makes observations about the world and sees how his parents react to the world and develops his perceptions of reality by taking both views into account. Vygotsky’s theories extend beyond the formative periods of cognitive development. Anyone engaged in learning activities will be able to build a more complex world view when those learning activities are done in a group because each person in the group enters with a slightly different perception of and approach to interpreting reality.17 In short, dialogue helps learners to construct and organize knowledge. Taken together, Piaget and Vygotsky form the basis of many modern writings on constructivist learning, where Vygotsky’s writings are known especially as social constructivism. Constructivism is the new standard in museum education, especially for school age children and increasingly for adults and exhibit making. MUSEUMS AND CONSTRUCTIVIST LEARNING In his article “The Constructivist Museum,” George Hein asserts that “the constructivist museum acknowledges that knowledge is created in the mind of the learner using personal learning methods. It allows us to accommodate all ages of learning.”18 In some ways, when one understands learning from an essentially constructivist viewpoint, all museums are places of constructivist learning; the visitor will constantly be evaluating information presented in the museum in terms of the knowledge she already holds and will reevaluate her worldview and restructure her knowledge based on the new information. But when the museum goes the extra step to encourage constructivist learning through interactive exhibits and innovative educational programming, the museum is encouraging a type of social constructivism, conversation. And encouraging conversation leads to both greater engagement with the material discussed and the potential for high levels of learning.

17

Vasily V. Davydov and Stephen T. Kerr, “The Influence of L. S. Vygotsky on Education Theory, Research, and Practice” Educational Researcher, 24:3 (Apr., 1995), 12-21 18 George E. Hein, “The Constructivist Museum,” The Educational Role of the Museum (New York: Routledge, 1999), 78.

Figure 2. BuzzBlog Post One way in which museums can employ these elements of social constructivism is by blogging. Blogs offer the opportunity for conversation, both through “blogosphere stories”19 and through commenting structures. For example, the Science Museum of Minnesota’s blog Science Buzz made a post entitled “Meat Repeat: Would You Eat Cloned Meat?” in December of 2006. This post elicited 26 responses (as of April 2007) and, although no active debate occurred in the comments, multiple viewpoints were expressed, ranging from “Give me some!” to “ew. its totally gross i dont like the idea of that.”20 The Science Museum’s bloggers kept tabs on the discussion, offering a link to the concurrent poll elsewhere on the Museum’s site where a more lively comment discussion was also taking place, further encouraging the engagement of readers.21 While it is impossible to measure what kind of learning occurred from this post, it is 19

A. De Moor and L. Efimova, “An argumentation analysis of weblog conversations. Proceedings of the 9th international working conference on the language-action perspective on communication modeling,” (LAP2004), Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.

20

Science Buzz, “Meat Repeat: Would You Eat Cloned Meat?” Science Museum of Minnesota, http://buzz.smm.org/buzz/blog/meat_repeat_would_you_eat_cloned_meat#comment, (accessed April 10, 2007)

21

Science Buzz, “Would You Buy/Eat Cloned Meat?” Science Museum of Minnesota, http://buzz.smm.org/buzz/node/2134, (accessed April 10, 2007)

clear from the number and type of responses that visitors engaged with the post and felt the desire to have their say, a manifestation of constructivist learning. EXPANDING THE MUSEUM EXPERIENCE Blogs offer more to museums and education than simply encouraging conversation, although conversation is a key ingredient in the value of museum blogs. Museum blogs have the potential to extend the museum visit beyond the time the visitor spends within the museum building. Research has shown that visitor learning extends far beyond the visit and later experiences enrich the perception of the visit. Falk and Dierking use the example of one woman whose response to the visit several months afterwards was tens of times richer than her response to the visit several minutes after it.22 Taxen and Frecon used this information and attempted to integrate Web 2.0 technology, including a blog, into a participatory post-visit experience. The researchers created a scroll station that served as a view screen for their blog near a major exhibit. Visitors were able to navigate the blog through what was unfortunately a somewhat confusing system while in the museum. Near the scroll station explanatory leaflets instructed visitors on how they could contribute their own opinions and observations from home. No one did, even when a promotion that rewarded contributions with movie tickets was run. The researchers attribute the lack of involvement with the scroll and blog to the fact that contribution entailed reading instructions and very little reading was done in the exhibit at all.23 Taxen and Frecon attempted to extend the museum visit in a very artificial way. The scroll was contrived and difficult to operate, and requested contributions were somewhat limited in scope. However, the relative failure of blog integration in their experiment should not lead to a defeatist attitude by museums. If a museum desires to actively involve post-visit museum goers in their blogs, the museum needs to make the blog visible and understandable. If Frecon and Taxon had used a traditional computer station, more people would have been successful in using it. If the blog is exhibit specific, include the online address on written advertisements or on any information that is handed out at the beginning of the visit. Moreover, make a link to the blog clear on the museum website. In this day and age, many museum goers will visit a website before their visit to ascertain hours, admission prices, and any special events. If they note a blog at this time, they may be compelled to return to it for more information after their visit. Thus far the value of the blog as a post-visit experience has not been proven, but its potential remains significant. PUBLICS RELATIONS Relating to the public is an essential part of day to day operations for any museum. Public relations is especially important for museum if they want to know how visitors 22

John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking, “Learning from Museums: An Introduction,” Learning from Museum, (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2000), 4-10. 23 G. Taxén and E. Frécon, “The Extended Museum Visit: Documenting and Exhibiting Post-Visit Experiences,” in Museums and the Web 2005: Proceedings,. Eds. J. Trant and D. Bearman. Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics, at http://www.archimuse.com/mw2005/papers/taxen/taxen.html, (accessed April 10, 2007).

feel about their institutions and if they want potential visitors to be aware of the institution. But museums and the field of public relations have had a difficult relationship. In the 1980s, museums were somewhat skittish around the idea of public relations. It was seen as an area to facilitate the securing of corporate sponsors and as something which might detract from the noble intentions of the museum.24 But now most large and medium sized museums have departments dedicated to public relations, and it is a regular part of life at a museum. A SELECTED OVERVIEW OF PUBLIC RELATIONS THEORY Public relations is both a profession and an academic subfield of communications.25 In the past thirty years, public relations has blossomed into a field with its own set of theory and research. Early in the history of public relations, business was conducted with a functional perspective, one that “sees publics and communication as tools or means to achieve organizational ends.”26 From this perspective, the public relation of interest is the one between the public relations officer and the media. There is very little consideration for how the public relates to the institution in question. Recently, the field of public relations has experienced a shift to a cocreational perspective. A cocreational perspective “sees publics as cocreators of meaning and [sees] communication as what makes it possible to agree to shared meanings, interpretations, and goals.”27 The cocreational perspective is one of a slate of more recent theories, such as the cultural approach to communication and constructivist learning, in which meaning is created communally. Instead of valuing the relationship between the public relations officer and the media as the functional perspective does, the functional perspective values the relationships that are developed even more than it values the achievement of public relations goals. The public relations officer is no longer telling the public what they want to buy (although that may still be part of his job); he is now engaging in a discussion with the public about what they want and how his company can work toward it. The “PR game” changes from one of message manipulation to one of relationship management. RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT Relationship management is a major new area of public relations theory. PR scholars are still working on a definition and explanation of what it is. Ledingham offers the following definition: “Effectively managing organizational-public relationships around common interests and shared goals, over time, results in mutual understanding and benefit for interacting organizations and publics.”28 Relationship management is an 24

David Finn, “Is there a Legitimate Role for Public Relations in the Arts?” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 471, (January 1984), 57-66. 25 Carl H. Botan and Maureen Taylor. “Public Relations: State of the Field,” Journal of Communication, 54:4, (December 2004), 645. 26 Ibid. 651 27 Ibid. 652 28 John A. Ledingham, “Explicating Relationship Management as a General Theory of Public Relations,” Journal of Public Relations Research, 15:2, (2003), 190.

ideal tact for museums to employ in their public relations strategies. Museums are always building a relationship with their publics whether it is intentional or not. An individual who visits a museum as a child will develop a relationship with that institution, colored by his/her interest in the objects, the context of the visit, and personal inclination. When the museum pursues cultivating these pre-existing relationships, the bonds between the visitor and the museum have the potential to become a great deal stronger. Relationship management is based significantly in the principles of interpersonal relationship building.29 Conversation, as discussed earlier, encourages the building of interpersonal bonds. Thus museums which blog have the opportunity to fulfill not only their institutional goals of communication and education, but the corollary need to employ a public relations strategy. MUSEUMS AND PUBLIC RELATIONS Just as museums have long been places where broadcast communication and behaviorist learning reigned, so to have museums been engaging in public relations from a functional perspective. Museums have advertised in newspapers, on radio and television, through press conferences and press releases, and with flyers and brochures, just to name a few. These forms of public relations strategies are primarily one-sided; the museum puts out a message and does not expect to hear one back from the public. In the first half of the twentieth century, it may not have been as important for museums to create a relationship with their publics as it is today. In the past 25 years museums have professed the importance of maintaining “a relationship with, rather than simply to, the public.”30 But the same book which makes that assertion then goes on to talk about maintaining relationships with the media and omits a discussion of other ways to create relationships with publics. A more recent book, from 1993, asserts that “managing the relationship between the museum and its public is critical to success.”31 Again the relationships offered by the book are all functional methods, broadcast methods. Museums believe in the importance of creating a relationship with publics, but are continuing to use stilted methods which are more appropriate for speaking to the public than conversing with it. MUSEUMS AND THE PROBLEM OF RADICAL TRUST One concept that is extremely important to the social web is “radical trust.” Radical trust is allowing “the consumer to build the brand based on the information that is most relevant to them.”32 Operating under the concept of radical trust entails that an institution not be afraid to ask what the museum means to the public. Radical trust requires a commitment on the part of the museum to accept criticism. At this moment, most museums do not trust radically. Museums, despite practicing constructivism, do not, in general, trust their visitors to be responsible. Museums, as public institutions 29

Ibid. 188 G. Donald Adams. Museum Public Relations. (Nashville: American Association for State and Local History, 1983), 10. 31 Timothey Ambrose and Crispin Paine. Museum Basics,(London: ICOM, 1993), 118. 32 Collin Douma, “Radical Trust,” Marketing Magazine, (August 28, 2006). 30

with public reputations, fear being publicly connected with obscenity. This fear makes blogging or other sorts of participatory media difficult for museums to allow freely. Many, if not most, museum blogs require that comments go through a moderation queue before they are posted publicly. While it is fair to judiciously delete obscene comments, a delay in comment posting may make the institution seem less than responsive. Radical trust should be an important concept for museums wishing to establish a community online. Most people are well behaved and able to think for themselves most of the time. Museums should not talk down to visitors and they should not pre-censor website content. A few bad apples should not ruin the bunch. The majority of people understand that some will be immature or inappropriate and the majority will appreciate the trust an institution extends them by creating opportunities for participation online. A relationship built on mutual trust is stronger than a relationship dependent on unidirectional trust. If museums wish to overcome the discipline wide fear of trusting the public, taking small steps is a good way to start. One small step might be starting a blog where the comments are not initially moderated. Through such a blog, publics will begin to see that the museum trusts them and they will, hopefully, come to trust the museum. BLOGS AS MUSEUM PUBLIC RELATIONS TOOLS Different museums have different goals. When a school child thinks about going to see a museum, they expect to see dinosaurs and lots of old stuff they are not allowed to touch. When an adult thinks of a museum, they think of dinosaurs, yes, but also of learning something about those dinosaurs, such as when they roamed the earth, how they evolved, and how they died out. Adults expect to encounter the science of the dinosaurs. When a museum challenges popular notions of what a museum it, it needs to work doubly hard to create good relationships with the public. This is what the Creation Museum has done.

Figure 3. Creation Museum Blog The Creation Museum, which is set to open May 28, 2007, has been chronicling its journey with a blog. The blog profiles employees, the building and exhibit making process, and has promoted a genuine sense of excitement about the forthcoming museum.33 Although the blog does not allow commenting, it is written conversationally, relatively often, and in all other respects functions like a blog. The Creation Museum blog connects to its audience. It consistently and discretely asks that readers pray for and support the museum; if one reads the blog and is like minded, one may well be compelled by the enthusiasm of the staff for the project and offer their prayers and financial support. The blog also highlights the memberships without sounding like a hard sell. When memberships are discussed, they are couched in a sense of excitement at how many people are involved and all that has been accomplished.34 Public investment is encouraged by seeing the staff’s personal investment in and passion for the project. Because the Creation Museum is not a traditional museum based on science, it will not draw in the usual tour groups and school children. Instead, the museum has reached out to an audience which already has a stake in the museum: Christian creationists. By targeting this particular group and creating a sense of fellowship through the blog, the Creation Museum has created a positive buzz for itself on its website. CONSTRUCTING CONNECTIONS 33 34

Creation Museum Blog, http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/museum/, (accessed April 8, 2007). “Membership Update,” Creation Museum Blog, http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/museum/2007/04/13/membership-update-5/, (accessed April 8, 2007).

Many of the theories which currently underlay contemporary museum practice can be applied to the practice of blogging. Museums are creating dialogue with visitors through online guestbooks, exhibit guestbooks, and round table discussions. Museums are offering visitors the opportunity to construct knowledge by offering interactive programming and encouraging discussion. Museums want to create and maintain a relationship with visitors through public relations. In general, museums are reaching out to their visitors and beginning to construct community. Given these circumstances, blogging is an appropriate museum practice which has the potential to widen a museum’s community beyond its geographical reach and extend museum resources to the world. As an appropriate museum practice, it is time that more museums take blogging under consideration. Museums, in a world where the social web exists and is an important source of information for the younger demographic, need to construct connections with the younger demographic now or risk being left behind. Blogging is one option for doing so. Museums have too long been perceived as the quiet, stuffy, stodgy, still places, isolated from the passage of time; museums need to reinvigorate their image and become part of the social web.

WORKS CITED Adams, G. Donald, Museum Public Relations, Nashville: American Association for State and Local History, 1983. Ambrose, Timothy and Crispin Paine. Museum Basics, London: ICOM, 1993. Avaro, Anne Ambouroue and Alain Godonou, “The Revitalization of the Abomey History Museum and the Web,” Museum International. 53.3, 2001. Botan, Carl H. and Maureen Taylor. “Public Relations: State of the Field,” Journal of Communication, 54:4, (December 2004). Davydov, Vasily V. and Stephen T. Kerr, “The Influence of L. S. Vygotsky on Education Theory, Research, and Practice” Educational Researcher, 24:3, (Apr., 1995). De Moor, A. and L. Efimova, “An argumentation analysis of weblog conversations. Proceedings of the 9th international working conference on the language-action perspective on communication modeling,” (LAP2004), Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. Douma, Collin, “Radical Trust,” Marketing Magazine, (August 28, 2006). Encyclopædia Britannica, s.v. “Jean Piaget,” http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article9059885, (accessed April 12, 2007) Falk, John H. and Lynn D. Dierking, “Learning from Museums: An Introduction,” Learning from Museum, Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2000. Findlan, Paula, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Finn, David, “Is there a Legitimate Role for Public Relations in the Arts?” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 471, (January 1984). Gill, Kathy, “How Can We Measure the Influence of the Blogosphere?” (paper 2004), http://faculty.washington.edu/kegill/pub/www2004_blogosphere_gill.pdf, (accessed February 14, 2007). Hein, George E., “The Constructivist Museum,” in The Educational Role of the Museum, ed. Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, New York: Routledge, 1999. Holmes, David, Communication Theory: Media, Technology and Society, London: Sage Publications, 2005. Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean, “Communication in theory and practice,” in The Educational Role of the Museum, ed. Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, New York: Routledge, 1999. Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean “Education, communication, and interpretation,” in The Educational Role of the Museum, ed. Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, New York: Routledge, 1999. Ledingham, John A., “Explicating Relationship Management as a General Theory of Public Relations,” Journal of Public Relations Research, 15:2, (2003).

MSN Encarta Dictionary, s.v. “Blogosphere,” http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_701704686/blogosphere.html, (accessed April 14, 2007). Taxén, G. and E. Frécon, “The Extended Museum Visit: Documenting and Exhibiting Post-Visit Experiences,” in Museums and the Web 2005: Proceedings,. Eds. J. Trant and D. Bearman. Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics, at http://www.archimuse.com/mw2005/papers/taxen/taxen.html, (accessed April 10, 2007). van House, Nancy, “Weblogs: Credibility and Collaboration in an Online World,” CSCW Workshop on Trust, http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/~vanhouse/Van%20House%20trust%20worksh op.pdf (accessed April 12, 2007).

BLOGS AND WEBSITES CITED Boingboing: A Directory of Wonderful Things, http://boingboing.net, (accessed April 14, 2007). Creation Museum Blog, http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/museum/, (accessed April 8, 2007). Creation Museum Blog, “Membership Update,” http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/museum/2007/04/13/membership-update5/, (accessed April 8, 2007). Historical Museum of Abomey, http://www.epa-prema.net/abomeyGB (accessed April 14, 2007). Instapundit.com, http://www.instapundit.com, (accessed April 14, 2007). PostSecret, http://postsecret.blogspot.com, (accessed April 14, 2007). Science Buzz, “Meat Repeat: Would You Eat Cloned Meat?” Science Museum of Minnesota, http://buzz.smm.org/buzz/blog/meat_repeat_would_you_eat_cloned_meat#c omment, (accessed April 10, 2007) Science Buzz, “Would You Buy/Eat Cloned Meat?” Science Museum of Minnesota, http://buzz.smm.org/buzz/node/2134, (accessed April 10, 2007)