ExhibitFiles: a community site for exhibit designers and developers
Wendy Pollock, Association of Science-Technology Centers, USA
Jim Spadaccini, Ideum, USA
http://exhibitfiles.org
ExhibitFiles is a creation of the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC), an international organization of science centers and museums, in collaboration with Ideum and a core group of exhibit developers and designers. The goal of the site is to provide the people who make museum exhibits with convenient access to resources that can be used to improve our work.
We developed the site, with support from the National Science Foundation, to preserve and share experiences and materials that are often unrecorded, temporary, and hard to locate. Museums tend to replace exhibitions every few years, and as staff change, knowledge is often lost. We think it's important to build on what others have done and learned, and to open our work to comment and review.
Site members can post comments, case studies, and reviews and contact other members through the site. Since ExhibitFiles opened in late April 2007, membership has grown to several hundred people, who collectively have contributed nearly 90 case studies and reviews. In response to formative evaluation studies, new site features will be released in early 2008.
Demonstration: Demonstrations - 2 [Demonstrations]
Keywords: exhibits, design, reviews, museums, user content
