"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