"Patron" is certainly not unique to the library world. Theater
subscribers, supporters of artists and the arts, and researchers in
museums, libraries, and archives are frequently called patrons. My
Webster's desk dictionary gives "a regular customer" as definition #3
for patron. The word "customer" is thereby extended into areas where
buying and selling are not pertinent, but I often call researchers in my
archives both patrons and customers, as well as visitors. "Visitors" is
being used much less frequently in my shop because it's too vague. A
serious researcher is doing more than "visiting," although each session
clearly is a "visit." The hordes of people in the museum are visitors
(to the museum), some of whom are also "tourists" because they're
traveling to do sightseeing. This is the normal sense of "tourist." A
frequent visitor to your museum from within the local area can hardly be
called a tourist. In Daniel Boorstin's "The Image," he derided tourism
because it connoted a superficial experience of historic sites,
institutions, and locales while traveling on a "tour," often in the form
of a "package." I think the tourism industry has to some extent
ameliorated this pejorative sense of tourism. Having just attended an
international conference on tourism and culture, I feel that I can say
with some authority that a tourist is a person whose motive for
traveling is to have "authentic" experiences (of places, historic
objects, foreign ambiance, etc.), even if it's limited by the logistics
of "touring." Most museums will have visitors, tourists, patrons,
students, scholars, customers (and critics, like Hank) in attendance.
They overlap in mode, motive, and function, and museums should be aware
of the differences. I think "visitor" is the broadest word, which covers
everyone in your museum who doesn't work there in some capacity. The
other terms are more specific. --David Haberstich