Accessing audiences

Visiting Visitor Books

Bibliographic Data

ID4877522
AuthorsMacdonald (0000-0001-5941-4388, University of Sheffield, corresponding author), Sharon Macdonald
Year2015
Volume3
Issue3
Pages119-136
Publication date2015-04-09
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMuseum and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1479-8360 • E-ISSN: 1479-8360
PublisherUniversity of Leicester (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.29311/mas.v3i3.65
OpenAlexW128647489
LanguageEN
Citations received57
References cited16

Museum visitor books, although held by almost all museums, are rarely used as a research source. This article explores their potential to provide insights and information about audience views, experiences and understandings. To do so, it focuses primarily on visitor books at the Documentation Centre of the former Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg, Germany. The article highlights questions about using such books as a research source and to this end it contains discussion of forms of address, visitor conceptions of the nature and role of visitor books and of museums and exhibitions, styles of entries, and ways in which visitors talk about exhibition media and types of display, and make comparisons and links with their own experience. It also includes discussion of some themes more specific to history exhibitions, including different possible 'temporal orientations' exhibited by visitors; as well as some more specific to the exhibition of morally and politically difficult topics, and of Nazism in particular

Appeal · Art · Documentation · Exhibition · Media studies · Nazism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Visitor pattern · Visual arts · Computer Science · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Museums and Cultural Heritage · Photography and Visual Culture

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access