It's strange how, again and again, visiting online exhibitions and other
WWW museum offerings gets portrayed as an ALTERNATIVE to actually,
personally, physically walking in the front door of a real museum and being
IN it.  The same argument might be made about the lovely coffee table books
we have about great museums or specific blockbuster exhibitions...a book is
a poor substitute for being there.  In neither case should it be couched as
an either/or situation!

Each presentation mode has its own qualities; it's our challenge as museum
folks to orchestrate the media in the way that best fulfills our mission
within our resources.

I challenge, too, the hint that the electronic medium is subordinate, or
only introductory, to another.  "Being there" isn't everything.  There was
much about the AZTEC exhibit in Denver that was stellar, but my strongest
personal recollection from the visit my son and I made was the sense of
being in a crowd...and it was packed...of zombies, all shuffling in mute
obedience to the urgings of their earphones.   I would have learned much
more from that exhibit online for two reasons: 1) I would have been able to
address each and every object individually and for as long as I wanted, not
bothered by jostling and the human current; and 2) I would have been better
able to deviate from the pre-ordained route of march to go back and look at
an object again as it gained new relevance for me in the light of other
objects I saw later.

This latter point--visitor control--is a qualitative difference in Web
sites that I think is important.  There are lots of disadvantages to the
small screen and the technology behind it, but one thing I can do is visit
an online exhibit at 6AM (when I'm freshest), navigate it in a variety of
directions, duck out to another site to reference related information that
may be in Holland, and come back to pick up my thread.  I've learned
recently that that this is called a "constructivist" approach...people
construct their own knowledge, for themselves, based on the knowledge they
already bring to the situation.  It's a refreshing turn-of-the-tables for
an interpreter who has spent 30 years leading people by the senses down the
tour/booklet/exhibit/AV program path that *we* decided was best for *them!*

In any case, let's consider the Web as just one of MANY alternatives for
reaching our interpretive goal(s), and use any that reach our desired
audiences in the ways we want.

Tom Vaughan                    \_   Cultural
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