This topic is a little old, but I've been on jury duty....
Comment books do give visitors the opportunity to vent on controversial
exhibits (e.g., "Global Warming"). They cannot be considered evaluation
because they are only expressions from self-selected visitors who feel
strongly about the topic, not a representative sample of the audience.
Comment books or cards become an interactive component of an exhibit where
visitors react to and become part of the interpretive material.

Even with our large and varied NY audience, including hordes of school
children, the books have not been vandalized and there have been very few
silly or scatalogical comments. But.... I have also used "suggestion boxes"
to sollicit ideas or questions about topics (dinosaurs, biological
diversity, e.g.) and there, where the comments cannot be seen, we do get a
lot of nuisance comments, pictures and throwaway stuff.

The Denver Museum of Natural History combined both the above ref'd forms of
audience comment in "Edge of the Wild." They ask  visitors to write about
their wildlife experiences, deposit the notes in a box and then select some
of them for exhibit behind glass.

Ellen Giusti, Exhibition Evaluator
American Museum of Natural History
Exhibition Department
Central Park West at 79th Street
New York, NY 10024

212 769 5646(voice)
212 769 5926(fax)
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