Martha ---
 
        In reply to your comments...
 
        I AGREE that museums have found better ways to make exhibition
and even research information available to the general public.  Partially,
museums have finally begun to learn how to self promote.  This means
going to newspapers and other media agencies with important new exhibition
announcements and such.
        I was loathe to bring up my opinion about how to effectively
reintegrate museum exhibition and research because people are REALLY
going to think I sound like a broken record.  However, since I was asked,
here are my thoughts.  First, the problem is this.  Museums carry out
research to a smaller or greater degree.  At least, this holds true for
Natural History museums.  This research is usually stuff that is fairly
obtuse and specifically for an audience of peers.  This is not to denegrate
the work that researchers do.  I just dont think that people want to
read the latest phylogenetic reconstruction of heteromyid rodents in their
spare time, for example.
        Exhibitions are ways to make research information accessible to the
public.  This too is a very creative task and one that is as important as
the research itself.  However, exhibitions as traditionally done cannot
effectively have enough depth to let people delve as far into the matter as
possible.  Everyone HOPES that a museum goer will head home and try to find
some references to stuff s/he found interesting.
        The work that I have been doing with building an on-line museum
over Internet can incorporate infinite depth.  The use of hypertext
enables users to move effortlessly through a loose hierarchy of information.
Therefore, the exhibition slowly blends into research.
 
 
Cheers,
 
Robert Guralnick
Museum of Paleontology
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720
[log in to unmask]
(510) 642-9696