Hi Alisa,
Our museum has used a traditional physical guest book for years. It's a binder with landscape oriented fields. Name, where are you from, first visit (YN), how did you hear about us, comments. The comments box is very small. 90% of the time we see brief positive "Beautiful Museum," "Great History," "I came with family." Other popular ones are "There should be a cafe," or the dreaded "not much has changed."
It gives us good info, but it's very brief. We also collect zip codes at registration.
We used to have a pin board with the United States and World Map, and would clear it off at the end of each year. We transformed that into what we call our Community Board. Guests are given notecards and a pen to write their answer to rotating questions. Right now the question is "How do you prepare for a disaster?" Next month will be día de los muertos focused "Who do you honor for DDLM?"
We transcribe these in a docx, and submit the physical notecards to institutional archives and have a sign with a notice that answers will be documented. We do have to regularly screen answers for profanities, but they are few. Kids love it. Among us drawings were popular earlier this year and we saw a lot of "Friends don't lie."
We dream of an oral history booth or digital feedback kiosk. Events are where we have our best data when we have staff or volunteers conduct in person surveys. We also send post event digital survey links, which do get some hits.
Data is important, and another hat to wear in museums. Hope to visit your museum one day. Buena suerte!
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René Ballesteros
Community Engagement Officer
Museum of South Texas History
Edinburg, TX
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Original Message:
Sent: 09-22-2022 01:23 PM
From: Alisa Zeljeznjak
Subject: Digital vs Physical Guestbooks
I'm curious about other museums that have digital or physical guest or sign books for visitors. The 9/11 Museum has what we call the "Signing Steel" where visitors can sign their name, leave a message, or sometimes draw something like the image below. Along with some very beautiful messages we also get the occasional inappropriate drawings (I'll leave that to you to figure out what they might be) or message.
Are people more likely to write something meaningful and appropriate when it's less ephemeral? Are there patterns in what people write when they want to say something but don't know what to write beyond the typical saying that goes along with a museum's message or mission? For us it's a lot of "Never forget" or "Never again" or a heart. What do other institutions see on a regular basis?
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Alisa Zeljeznjak
Production Assistant
National September 11 Memorial & Museum
New York NY
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