As we mentioned in posts earlier this year, we’ve written and have now submitted a proposal with the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) to fund an open source initiative to develop software for computer-based interactive exhibits.  Our preliminary Website for the Open Exhibits project is now available at openexhibits.org.  The new site contains a screencast introducing the project along with a description of this planned project.

Also on the Open Exhibits site, you’ll  find results from the survey we conducted in April and May of this year. We had a total of 125 responses from 110 museums.  The survey results can be filtered by small and large museums, as well as informal science institutions.  You’ll also find  links to our Facebook group, YouTube page, and Flickr presence.   Please join us on these sites and we’ll keep you up-to-date as we  (hopefully) start this new initiative.

Last night a number of us from Ideum went to the opening of Dawn of the Dinosaurs: Triassic New Mexico at the New Mexico Museum of  Natural History and Science.  We helped develop two computer-based interactive exhibits for this exhibition.

The Fossil Viewer touch screen allows visitors to pan and zoom an image of large fossil block discovered at Ghost Ranch here in New Mexico.  There’s more about this interactive in the Ideum portfolio (see Triassic Fossil Viewer).

The other interactive exhibit is a small database collection of information about Coelophysis, the official State Fossil of New Mexico. We haven’t added this to our portfolio yet, but you can see the Web version of this kiosk at nmstatefossil.org. The floor version is a bit different in design and functionality. This Web-based exhibit was developed using Ruby on Rails.

The Coelophysis database exhibit uses the iCab browser, which has an excellent kiosk-mode. Both of the interactives we developed with the Natural History Museum run using Mac mini computers. Along with their low cost and small footprint, we found them powerful enough to run a 24″ monitor at a 1920 x 1200 resolution (for the Fossil Viewer).

Dawn of the Dinosaurs: Triassic New Mexico opens tomorrow, May 17th and will be a permanent part of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science.

In just over two weeks, we’ve received more than 40 responses to our survey about computer-based exhibits in museums. The survey is open to museums of art, history, and science. We’re also hoping to hear from aquariums, children’s museums, planetariums, visitor centers, and zoos.

As Emily mentioned in our last post, we are conducting this survey to support a grant proposal to fund Open Exhibits, a project that will allow us to research, develop, test, and disseminate open source exhibit software to museums.As promised, we will share all of the survey results with those of you who have participated as soon as the survey is complete. We wanted to share a few preliminary findings that we thought were particularly interesting in the meantime.

So far, the results indicate that almost two thirds of electronic exhibits stay on the museum floor for more than 4 years. 40% of respondents selected “More than 5 years” when answering the question, “On average, how long does an electronic exhibit stay on the floor at your institution?” 8% selected “5 years” and another 16% selected “4 years.” The remaining responses were divided up between less than one year and up to three years.

55.9% of those who responded to the question, “Does your institution currently have Internet access in the public exhibit areas?” answered Yes. 26.5% answered No, and the remaining 17.6 % said Partial. These answers serve as a reminder that many museums are still struggling with basic Internet infrastructure issues. This feedback will likely inform our approach electronic exhibit development.Obviously, these findings will become more valuable as we receive more responses.

We really appreciate those of you who helped spread the word. Many thanks to following blogs for writing about Open Exhibits: Ancient World bloggers, Musematic, ExhibiTricks, Open Objects, and Museum 2.0.Update: April 7, 2008 - We now have 73 responses to the survey.  Thanks to A Look at Art & Design for the survey mention.Update: May 16, 2008 - The survey was closed on May 10th. We received 125 responses.

We are in the process of writing our first National Science Foundation grant proposal to fund Open Exhibits, a project that will allow us to develop, test, and disseminate three open source software templates that will allow museum professionals’ to assemble electronic exhibits for the museum floor. The Open Exhibits templates, as well as the source code, training opportunities, and prototype exhibits, will be made freely available to museums. The exhibits will be built using ActionScript 3 and Flex.

We are seeking feedback from museum professionals so we can tailor our project to meet the needs of the field. We have put together a survey to help us assess those needs: to gain insight into the state of electronic exhibits at a variety of museums, to gauge interest in the Open Exhibits software templates, and to better understand museums’ technical expertise and constraints.If you are a museum professional, please take a few minutes to complete the survey — and please help us spread the word about it. It will take about 20 minutes and we will share the results with everyone who participates. We will also keep you updated about the status of Open Exhibits.

Update: The survey was closed on May 10, 2008.

I just posted a case study about Jukebox Memories on the ExhibitFiles site. This computer-based exhibit is part of the Memory exhibition developed by the Exploratorium back in 1998. Jukebox Memories plays 120 #1 songs from 40 years of popular music spanning the dawn of rock and roll right through to the mid-1990s. The exhibit employs a simple question and answer format, asking the visitor which artist performed a particular song. While this activity engages most visitors, the exhibit is not about pop music trivia, it is about the memories that visitors associate with particular songs and eras.

I helped design and develop Jukebox Memories while working at the Exploratorium in the 90s. For that same exhibition, I helped develop another exhibit, A Memory Artist. The exhibition website is still up and is now, like the exhibit itself, nearly a decade old. You can check out the case study on the ExhibitFiles.