Personalization: Not Just for Visitors

    One final note on personalization. This entire chapter has focused on how visitors can have more personalized experiences in museums. But the staff deserve their own voices as well. Just as it is hard for visitors to have relationships with institutions that don't acknowledge their growing connection, it's difficult to have relationships with buildings as opposed to individuals. And for staff--especially staff who work on the floor and talk personally with visitors every day--it's a way to feel like a human in your job instead of a conveyor of company policy.

    In some institutions, this personalization happens internally. In 2004, I visited the Center Of Science and Industry (COSI) in Columbus, Ohio. In the staff breakroom, they had a wall of photos, names, and titles of all staff members so that people could easily identify each other across the institution. This is a great (and not atypical) way for staff who work in a large, diverse, and often siloed organization to recognize each other as individuals. But COSI took it one step further. Each nameplate featured the staff photo, name, title, and "dream title." The director of education's dream title was "chief banana eater." A visitor service representative proclaimed herself "queen of bubbles," and so on. This very simple addition allowed staff to express their aspirational (and creative) selves along with the more standard information about their work.

    In other cultural institutions, the Web is becoming a place where diverse staff can share their unique voices about the inner workings of the institution. Director blogs are interesting, but directors already have several forums in which they can express themselves. I'm more interested in institutions in which scientists, curators, conservators, educators, exhibit developers, and floor staff share their unique voices through public blogs. At several museums, floor staff have been encouraged to participate in blogging programs, either through a central institutional blog or by allowing them to run their own blogs. One of my favorite staff blogs is from the Exploratorium Explainers, a group of young floor staff at the Exploratorium who work with school group visitors. Their topics range from exhibits they have crushes on to boring events they work to funny interactions with visitors on the floor. Their tone is often irreverent, but they do a wonderful job communicating their energy and love of the institution through their writing.

    The Explainers’ blog is a rare resource; few marketing departments are willing to allow floor staff to serve as the voice of institutions on the web. This is hypocritical and short-sighted. Floor staff are the voice and face of the museum to visitors on a daily basis—they already serve a marketing function in that regard. They also have the most immediate understanding of visitors' interests and therefore may be able to provide the most relevant content to share with readers. And they are publicly accessible. In one situation at the Science Museum of Minnesota, a woman connected with a staff member with an unusual name (Thor) on the museum’s Science Buzz blog, and then later had an in-person follow-up discussion with him on the floor at the museum. That's a social connection between two individuals that was only possible because Thor was able to express his unique voice on the museum's website.

    Encouraging staff, especially junior staff, to blog on behalf of the institution is a win-win for the staff and the museum. Giving staff a professional venue for their thoughts creates a high (museum-level) expectation quality-wise. It encourages the development and maintenance of institutional memory and helps new staff learn the ropes in the visitor services departments, which exhibit high turnover. If staff maintain personal blogs, who knows how kindly or unkindly they will reference their workplace. But if they are blogging under the masthead of the institution, they go from being freelancers to staff reporters. They want to further the institution, and to do so without fear of being shut down or fired.

    Some companies walk this line by offering their staff individual blog space (in which they can write about pretty much whatever they want) and then maintaining an aggregate, more publicized blog that pulls appropriate posts from the personal ones. Others start with internal blogs, keep those going until management feels comfortable, and then go public. And others set basic guidelines and then step away.

    I'd love to see more floor staff blogs (and security blogs, and exhibit maintenance blogs, and blogs from staff across the wide range of functions of cultural institutions). Floor staff in particular are often the least empowered staff authority-wise. Supporting staff blogging is a great way to acknowledge the extent to which they are the ones who make memorable visitors experiences. The Explainers' blog showcases a group of people who are dedicated to their institution and grateful for the opportunity to be one of its mouthpieces. I can only imagine that the blog is improving staff retention. As one early Explainer/blogger, Ryan Jenkins, put it when reflecting on the experience of writing for the blog: "Finally, I want to say how proud it made me feel that the explainers, on our own, had continued the spirit of innovation that defines the special place we work at."

    But the Web isn't the only place that staff can make personal connections with visitors. When the Monterey Bay Aquarium mounted a temporary exhibition called Fishing for Solutions in 1997, they took a new approach to visitor talk-back experiences that integrated staff voices as well as visitors'. The exhibition focused on the negative impacts of overfishing, rising consumption of seafood, and (human) overpopulation on the health of the oceans and ocean inhabitants. At the end of the exhibition, a talkback station invited visitors to share their own solutions. The label text read:

"People like you fish for solutions, too

The fisheries issues you've learned about are complex and changing. We believe that the best way to keep up with the issues is to join a conservation group. People also make different personal choices they believe will help ensure healthy fish populations, from how they vote, to what they eat, to how many children they have. Read what some of our employees and visitors are doing to help fish populations. What will you do to help turn the tide?"

(source:Visitor Voices in Museum Exhibitions book)

This area showcased comments from staff about their own personal lifestyle choices relevant to the issues at hand. Staff signed their comments with their names and positions at the Aquarium, which further personalized the connection between visitors and the real people who work at the museum. This technique was effective in modeling desired results because it demonstrated that the same staff who wrote the labels were willing to "put their money where their mouths were" and talk about their own personal lives and choices. Several of the responses from visitors were described as "self-congratulatory," with green promises the visitors making testimonials about their own good behavior and choices. Writing about this talkback experience, senior exhibit developer Jenny Sayre Ramberg commented that "For those visitors, the activity was an opportunity to reinforce their worldview and choices." This is true for the staff comments as well. Whether you are a visitor or a staff member, the opportunity to express yourself and your unique identity relative to the content of the institution is an important way to assert your existence and relevance to the experience at hand.

    Finally, encouraging staff to engage in participatory activities that highlight their individuality helps connect them to participatory efforts overall. Personalization is the first step to visitors seeing themselves as potentially active, social members of the institutional community. Don’t you want staff to see themselves that way, too?

You've reached the end of Chapter 2. I really appreciate your comments on this!

Would you like to continue to the next chapter, or return to the outline?