It is indeed true that some museum experiences, particularly those which really
affect one's emotions, will never be captured by comment books and that it is
difficult for us to evaluate the total impact of such experiences on our
visitors.

John Falk of Annapolis is someone who is giving it a good shot. John feels, and
I very much agree, that it is largely a waste of time to measure short-term
learning on the part of adult visitors. He sees a museum as a buffet table of
learning opportunities. What appeals to one visitor, at a particular point in
time, will not be of interest at others, or to other visitors. Each visitor
fills his plate, each visit, with different offerings from the table.
Therefore, any single attempt to measure "learning" would be inappropriate.

John's approach is to ask visitors to a particular exhibition if he could
contact them some months downstream. He is interested in how the exhibition
affected them, what they remember best and, particularly, whether that
experience motivated the visitor to undertake a further learning experience
associated with it.

John has now interviewed more than a thousand visitors, six, twelve or more
months after they visited a particular exhibition, and has been struck by the
number and variety of additional learning experiences reported by his
respondents.

It is certainly not a precise measure of longterm learning in heritage
institutions, but it gives most of us far more information than we presently
collect. Christina Simpson and Patti Harvey at the Glenbow in Calgary and I are
currently developing a plan to use both John's approach and a very different,
but equally interesting one, developed by Deborah Perry of Chicago, in a
longitudinal study of learning in our institutions.

Harry Needham
Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation