Historic Annapolis Foundation currently uses two self-guided/audio tape
walking tours, and is now developing a third one.  The two complete ones
take visitors through our historic district.  Visitors pay a rental fee
(between $5-$7) and have approx. 2 hours to use the tape.  As for their
success, one is very successful, while the other will likely fade in
oblivion shortly.  The key to the success of the first one seems to be
the use of Walter Conkrite as the narrator.  We call our tour "Walk With
Walter" TM and people seem to love it -- and they don't seem to mind
leaving their driver's license or their keys to ensure that the tape is
returned.

The new tour we are developing is somewhat similar but site specific.
However, rather than being an audio tape, it will be a random access
digital recording (uses a wand).  We will be using this to provide
visitors with more information about our garden, without having to
require the additional time of volunteers.

The company who produced (and is producing #3) these tours is
Acoustiguide.  Their main office is in NY, but they seem to have
subsidiary offices all over the place.  From our experience, they are
very easy to work with.

Alecia Parker
Historic Annapolis Foundation
(410)267-8149
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Aspen Historical Society wrote:
>
> The Aspen Historical Society is interested in creating a self-guided walking
> tour with an accompanying audio cassette.  Does anyone know of anything
> similar that has been successful? I was discouraged from pursuing this by
> one company that said this kind of program is usually not economically and
> logistically viable.  We have been running walking tours of our historic
> downtown in the summers for some time now, but we are finding it more and
> more difficult to find volunteers we can count on.  We also would like to
> find a way to make the tours more accessible to people by expanding the
> available times.  This is impossible right now since we don't even have
> enough volunteers to do the tours three times a week.  This is where the
> idea of audio tours came up.  Any other suggestions?
>
> Kimi Bensen
> Curator of Education
>
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