Dear Deanna,
Thanks for taking the time to respond.  Your comments should be shared
with all.
Best Wishes,
John

deanna l jordan wrote:

>  Most of my experience has been with working with small museums. I can
> remember the day I was working on some early designs for a display and
> I had a budget of fifty dollars for supplies and the first thought
> that came to me was that to do what I had in mind was goning to cost
> me all of fifteen bucks! I had to find some way to spend money on that
> puppy! Was I ever happy for about fifteen minutes. I think small
> museums to be effectrive HAVE to make better use of the resouces they
> have at hand. They have to find the perfect photograph in their
> collection, use their oral histories on hand to advantage to make that
> personal connection and tell the story from the local prespective.
> Also, they're at a greater advantage in that they can often expect to
> ask a local person with a connection to the exhibit to come in and
> talk about it and interact with the visitors and know they'll have
> them for as long as necessary. And out of that give and take a vital
> connection will be made with the visitor that will most likely
> generate more information for future refinements for the display. I
> also think it's the personal elements that small museums can work with
> much better than large ones. They don't have a schedule of when the
> tour should be completed per se. With the Arkansas Air Museum I could
> call people to volunteer to lead tours who'd had a lifetime of
> experience in aviation and who loved to talk for hours and hours about
> it and never tell the same story twice. And that's nice when you have
> people who make it a point to visit often bringing their current group
> of house guests with them everytime. In effect your staff and
> volunteers are as much exhibits as the items on display. And I don't
> think you'd find that so much in larger museums. Thomas E. (Pete)
> Jordon