A friend of mine recently did the sef-guided tour at Graceland and was
really impressed.  She liked the flexibility of beign able to turn it off
and on again when she was ready to move on.  She also thought that the
conntent was excellent.  She had gone not expecting to be impressed at all
so it was a great outcome for them.  I agree that many people prefer to be
led by a human being but I also think that there is alot to be said for the
accuracy of a standardized tour which does not depend on what the individual
guide thinks is important or interesting.  I believe that having the option
of a self-guided tour is a very good one.

Elizabeth Stith
Cornad/Caldwell House Museum

At 12:11 PM 01/06/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>Two sites that utilize audio cassette walking tours come to mind.  Alcatraz
>Island, a site of the National Park Service, uses personal audio cassette
>players to narrate the history of this famous correctional institution.
>Tennessee's Graceland, too, uses audio devices to guide visitors through the
>mansion while simultaneously providing a narrative account of Elvis' life.
>
>It should be noted that this type of interpretation is usually better suited
>to sites with very high visitorship thus making human-guided tours
>impractical. Furthermore, some visitor surveys have demonstrated that people
>generally dislike audio tours, preferring instead to be led by a human
>being.
>
>Nicholas P. Ciotola
>Curator, Italian American Collection
>Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania
>1212 Smallman Street
>Pittsburgh, PA 15222
>www.wpaitalians.com
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Aspen Historical Society [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2000 6:54 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Self-guided walking tours
>
>
>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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