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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