Date:         Sun, 10 Sep 1995 10:49:50 EDT
   From: "Zahava D. Doering" <[log in to unmask]>

            Institutional Studies
   There is no evidence that putting images on the WWW has any impact
   on attendance.  Not surprising, as the users of WWW are museum-goers
   who probably know of the museum/exhibit/program from other sources
   as well.  The notion that the WWW would increase attendance is very
   far-fetched.  I see many benefits of the WWW in the museum context,
   but audience expansion is definitely not one of them.
I think without data it is pretty easy to argue both sides of this. On one
hand you have the "whet the appetite" argument - saw an image of the
whaling ship, Charles W. Morgan, have to plan a vacation to see the real
thing, versus the "been there - done that" argument - saw an image of the
whaling ship, Charles W. Morgan move on to the next thing. I have really
no idea which argument - or other theory - will hold sway. Maintaining
a site of pointers to online sailing resources I've certainly had email
requests of the nature, "Is there information on XXX museum", and "I'm
planning on traveling in YYY area, are there any sailing museums in that
area?" Whether this is new interest, or just existing interest recycled
in a new media, I can't tell. If I had time, I'd certainly love to build
an imagemap geographic WWW facility that had little clickable dots where
various maritime museums are.

I can imagine arguing that the relation between WWW and attendance is like
the relation of CDs to live-concerts, in that they are different experiences,
and can have a synergistic relationship. I expect in a couple of years
we'll start having real data to go on. About all I can really tell, is that
even in my tiny backwater niche of the net, in a recent 24 hour period, I had
approximately 30 visitors each hour, which is noticeable.

Mark Rosenstein.
http://community.bellcore.com/mbr/sailing-page.html