Does anyone know of visitor surveys that ask how much members of the public know about railroad technology? We are working on a strategy to help our visitors better understand what is being exhibited and will be conducting such a survey this spring. If anyone is aware of similar work done already please let us know where it can be found. This is a reaction to an article in the Spring 97 issue of "Railroad History," entitled Preservation Topics: Are Railroad Museums Forgetting the Basics?" It brings up the issue of the public not knowing such things as what steers a train, how they change tracks, or what an engineer does. Too many of us assume that everyone knows there basic things, but watching and listening to visotors will quickly show that many do not. I suggest reading the article to all working in rail museums of any size. <br>



rdgoldfede@aol.com

You raise some very good questions. I can offer some basic comments. First, Visitor Studies is a well-established field in the museum world, and there are a lot of resources available, including some excellent books available through AAM and related local museum associations. There's even a Visitor Studies Association. Also, examples of survey instruments can be found on the WWW. In the program I have been working with, we took the approach of trying to find out not only what the visitors already knew about the subject, but also what things they might want to learn about. <br>We settled on collecting the following set of data:<p>1) Visitor Profile (who are we surveying?)<br>2) Visitor's Knowledge of the subject (what does the visitor already know about railroads?)<br>3) Most Common Misconceptions (what common misconceptions do visitors have about railroads?)<br>4) Visitor's Interests (Why did they come? What aspects of railroading might they be interested in learning about?)<br>5) Visitor Preferences (What did they like and not like about what they saw?)<p>The actual questions used to collect the data are probably best created with local conditions in mind, but these are some core concepts.<br><br>



jsmatlak@earthlink.net