LyndaK wrote:
>
>      Hi everyone! At the Australian Musuem in Sydney we are currently
>      looking at the idea of open collections. At the moment we use our
>      collections as the basis of many of our exhibitions, but like most of
>      you have a huge range of 'stuff' out of the public eye (both natural
>      history and anthropological collections).
>
>      We have three questions of you all:
>      1. Do visitors want to see museum collections? Has anyone conducted
>      any research into this?
>      2. Would visitors come to museums more often if they knew they could
>      see more of our collections? Is there research/data supporting this?
>      3. Any examples of other institutions that have undertaken this either
>      successfully or unsuccessfully? (we do have some literature already)
>
>      I know there was a thread discussing this last year and I kept all the
>      responses but we're interested in these 3 questions in particular. I
>      will post a summary to the list if there's sufficient interest.
>
>      Thanks in advance.
>      Lynda kelly, Evaluation Coordinator, Australian Museum, Sydney
>      [log in to unmask]


Contact the Colorado Historical Society in Denver (don't know their
E-mail address or if they even have e-mail).  They are establishing, or
by now have, an open collections.

Bob Handy