>The following request is being posted to several listservs.  Please forgive
>the duplication.
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>The Gallaudet University Library is developing a proposal regarding the
>integration of multimedia into its services.  We would like your input on
>how multimedia applications are being used at your institution.  We are
>especially interested in library and archival uses of multimedia, but
>would also like to know how multimedia is being used in other departments
>as well.  We thank you, in advance, for your time.
>
The Franklin Insitute has used multimedia to add personalities or guides to
 computer interactives for the exhibit floor.  They add the dimention of
story teller, entertainer, and educator to interactives which look to get
complex science principals across to our visitors.  I have found the guides
to be more compelling to visitors to get information from than text or even
digitized speech.  Also, with the advent of digitial video, they don't add
much cost to the development of the software or the procurement of the
hardware to run it on.
 
We are also begining the process of making multimedia versions of our
exhibit devices and museum collections to be made available inside the
museum (where the actual artifact is "behind glass") and outside the museum
via the internet (as the Exploratorium is beginning to do using mosaic at
www.exploratorium.edu.)
 
Michael Moulton
Exhibit Developer
The Franklin Institute Science Museum