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