Date: Sun, 10 Sep 1995 10:49:50 EDT From: "Zahava D. Doering" <[log in to unmask]> Institutional Studies There is no evidence that putting images on the WWW has any impact on attendance. Not surprising, as the users of WWW are museum-goers who probably know of the museum/exhibit/program from other sources as well. The notion that the WWW would increase attendance is very far-fetched. I see many benefits of the WWW in the museum context, but audience expansion is definitely not one of them. I think without data it is pretty easy to argue both sides of this. On one hand you have the "whet the appetite" argument - saw an image of the whaling ship, Charles W. Morgan, have to plan a vacation to see the real thing, versus the "been there - done that" argument - saw an image of the whaling ship, Charles W. Morgan move on to the next thing. I have really no idea which argument - or other theory - will hold sway. Maintaining a site of pointers to online sailing resources I've certainly had email requests of the nature, "Is there information on XXX museum", and "I'm planning on traveling in YYY area, are there any sailing museums in that area?" Whether this is new interest, or just existing interest recycled in a new media, I can't tell. If I had time, I'd certainly love to build an imagemap geographic WWW facility that had little clickable dots where various maritime museums are. I can imagine arguing that the relation between WWW and attendance is like the relation of CDs to live-concerts, in that they are different experiences, and can have a synergistic relationship. I expect in a couple of years we'll start having real data to go on. About all I can really tell, is that even in my tiny backwater niche of the net, in a recent 24 hour period, I had approximately 30 visitors each hour, which is noticeable. Mark Rosenstein. http://community.bellcore.com/mbr/sailing-page.html