What is a Fossil?
Fossils are the remains of organisms (plants and animals) that lived long ago. Many fossils date from times when there were no people living on earth. Most are so old, and have been buried so long, that they have turned into stone. People have collected and analyzed fossils since ancient times.
Footprints, tracks or other traces left behind by an animal are also called fossils.
Visitor Studies is a well-developed and relatively long-established field among museum educators. After all, how better to understand the experiences of learners than actually to observe their passage through a carefully structured set of artifacts, navigation guidance, and polished label text. Some go slow; others quickly. Some are in a group frame while others are solo, either encountering the exhibit for the first time, or as a repeat visitor. Motivations vary from casual onlookers to serious enthusiasts or professionals. What is common to all visitor experience, though, is the overabundance of information presented in multiple channels — video, audio, text, and object-based (visual) display. With a view to spreading out the load of learning beyond the time frame of the in-person visit or the online screen-by-screen clicking and scrolling, I offer the following proposal for adapting label text paired with reference photos from the label’s placement in the exhibition context.
=-= A Modest Proposal for Allowing Museum Visitors to Read Deeply in the Exhibition =-=
As an annual member at the Grand Rapids Public Museum, I have made return visits each month or more often. My familiarity with the organization of exhibit spaces and specific displays has progressed from the first impressions stage that one-time or first-time visitors experience to layer on more and more details and depth now, with each repeat visit noticing more facets and meanings, but also taking the time to dig into the excellent panel (label) texts, too. With so much to take in, though, many visitors are “channel surfing” as they flit from scene to scene, not actually digesting the carefully composed label texts.
A few days ago I tried out an idea to allow people to look at the panel texts before and after their on-site visit. The idea is to put the label text online or to send it to them upon request. This way of engaging visitors complements the other forms of outreach (core exhibition videos, scavenger hunts, and so on) that extend the experience of exploring content in a sustained and perhaps repeated way; not just reading during the time spent inside the museum or its website. In order to experiment with the conversion from gallery text into ebook (PDF or formats suited to ebook reading devices and apps) I snapped photos of the label text in its setting overall and then stood at the glass face of the case to minimize glare to capture an image of the text by itself. Then I used OCR (Optical Character Recognition software) to convert the photo into plain text suitable for copying and pasting, highlighting, and so on. If a museum were to create a professional version or an ebook with chapters for each of the main components of the permanent exhibits, then likely it would be worth making photos better than simple snapshot; ones with glare from the glass case removed (polarizing filter or else opening the glass entirely to make the picture). The result of this experiment is illustrated with an example from the FOSSILS exhibition at the top of this article: context plus label text.
A few weeks after this experiment with some of the permanent displays at the GRPM, I attended the traveling exhibition, “Pterosaurs: Flying in the Age of Dinosaurs,” created at the American Museum of Natural History (amnh.org) and opening for display in Grand Rapids from March to September 2022. Impressions and additional thinking about the value of an ebook or document holding the entirety of exhibition label text came to mind again here.
Here is a list of first impressions during the member-only preview on Saturday morning, March 5, 2022, after about an hour in the throng.
<>Impressive overall effect: so much to see and do, small details of fascination along with giant ones. Too bad there were no (imagined) sound effects, though, since audio makes any experience more immersive. For example, playback a sound design with membrane wings big, medium, and small as they flap alone or in the company of others. For vocalizations, maybe go with the ancient throaty sound of today’s Sandhill Crane!
<>Too much information: Creating an ebook would allow the Enthusiast or Maven-kind of visitor a way to digest every morsel of information at leisure, including before and after the gallery visit. Related: maybe do a video walk-through commentary with exhibit builder/installation crew as they talk about complicated or challenging parts of the set-up. Another video could offer suggestions for different ways to engage with the ocean of information. For example, random browsing from point to point in casual mode; reading the high titles in large size first to grasp the overall chunks of the exhibition, then go back and read just the subsection titles to see the major elements, and finally read individual displays within the exhibition. Yet another way is to start with 3 or 4 questions about Pterosaurs, then hunt for clues to answer such things as: time frame, geographic range, range in body size, food sources, reproduction, lifespan, what paleontologists still do not know, etc.
<>Excellent video rest stops: being able to sit down and watch something less than 5 minutes long is perfect.
<>Tags: it would be great if the hosting museum were to present a few social media tags at the start, throughout, and at the end so that any visitors wanting to pool their pics and videos with others can do so.
<>Essay or poetry or drawing contest? Maybe invite visitors to respond and react to their impressions and sit at a table at the end of the exhibition route to put together something for a kind of contest.
Compared to books and movies, the 3-dimensional experience of browsing from location to location at a museum conveys memories into learners’ minds in a spatially engaged way. Instead of turning the page of a book or navigating a video by chapter marks, in a museum exhibit the learner must physically move her or his eyeballs from display to display to form an impression of the artifacts and graphic design of the text and illustrations. Some go faster than others. Some are keener than others who have a more casual interest in the subject. But no matter the person’s reading level and motivation, they will form impressions as they move from one eye-catching spot to another. Even the most dedicated learner, though, will probably not see all of the text and artifacts in just one visit.
Pterosaurs — so much to read and see: This photo shows the many kinds of text: major headings, subheadings for a particular display case, and then individual artifact identifiers and interpretive text or context. Moving from one display to another in a non-linear sequence means that ideas and impressions pile up in different ways for each person. But if museums and exhibit makers were to translate or transpose the sum total of label text into a series of paragraphs paired with identifier photos that the text belongs with, then learners can read and reread the material and thus gain a complete and full understanding of everything contained in the exhibit plan.
A lot of thinking goes into the placement, sequence, and scope of content that the exhibit will convey to visitors. Most of the navigation and “attention guidance” is subliminal or built-into the layout: where to place a piece of text and at what size and word-count, for example. Reminiscent to browsing an illustrated magazine, one person might flip through casually and glance only at the headlines and captions to the photos. Another person might flip through for an overall sense of the article and then return to the start and read line by line. Likewise of museum visitors, some will skim through just “looking at the pictures,” but others will try to read every word — at least for a few panels.
Example from Pterosaurs traveling exhibition— about learning how to “read” the exhibition stories: Until now the hosting museum and the creators of the traveling exhibit have been content to display everything in its fully polished final draft, ready for public engagement. There is little specific instruction given about how to navigate and study the many texts large (major headings), medium (subsections), and small (detailed interpretations and identifications) so as to come away with a comprehensive grasp of what the designers put into the presentation. Just as young people are taught strategies and habits how to read, so too should (young) museum goers be taught to “read” the sophisticated arrangement of space, color, text, and artifact that go into the creation of an exhibit.
So this modest proposal for transposing museum label text into ebook form for reading closely is straightforward: pair the label text with its adjacent display context. Preface the ebook document with a few words about purposes of this method of engaging with the subject, along with advice about ways to work through the label texts alone and in coordination with a visit (or repeat visit) to the museum gallery. Value-added features to the basic ebook could include an index or concordance of keywords to allow searching. A page or two of links and further reading for each age-level would be helpful to teachers, home-schoolers, and non-native learners of English, too. Potentially, too, languages other than English (LOTE) could be created by machine translation (online services), or with the help of native speakers who are paid or volunteer (friends of the museum). Collecting user experiences, comments, and questions could come via social media prompts on blog, website, photosharing, or other platforms, too.
All together, this low-complexity approach to extending the museum experience of object-based-learning is practical, economical, and part of a life-long learning philosophy to make the subjects inside the museum accessible to people outside the walls of the exhibit halls. Please send your reactions, refinements, or alternatives to the author at anthroview+labeltext atgmail dotcom or tag your online posts with #labeltext2ebook so that others can see the field of play now and in the future.
