We have visitor logs dating back to the late 1970s, though these last ones
are just loose sheets that look like they were removed from a binder.  All
of these were just stuffed in a closet.  My colleague said, "What should we
do with these old books?  Nobody looks at them, let's throw them out."  My
answer was an emphatic no.  Though the president of our Board of Directors
asks to go through the preceding year's records at the end of each year, and
 my colleague and I also compile an end of the year report in which we
enumerate the total number of visitors,  school groups, etc. (though we have
not been asked to do this), nobody had gone through the books further than
that.  When our president asked me what days I wanted to work, I worried
that this implied that the Board felt that one tour guide on duty at a time
was sufficient, so I went through the records from 1994--2003 in an attempt
to prove that at least two people on duty would serve the museum much
better.  Of course, I wasn't able to "prove" this, but I did find out quite
a few interesting things, which we would not have known if I hadn't gone
through the records:  i.e. our visitation has been slowly but steadily
increasing over the last 10 years, the percentage of individual visitors to
tours is about equal, and the percentage of local visitors is VERY low.  I
also found out a good bit about the operation of the museum in the past and
will probably be able to deduce more if I look back past 1994.  By the time
I was through with this project, I was heartily sick of visitor logs, but
now that I have my system of tabulating the data "set up" I'm recording this
year's information monthly, so it will be all in place at the end of the
year.
Susannah West
John Rankin House, Ripley, Ohio

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