I am on the lookout for research conducted on visitor experiences at interpretive centres or information centres at cultural and natural heritage sites. Please let me know if you have any suggestions on reputable research in this regard from your corner of the globe.
An overview of Malaysia's tourism organizations and their roles as information providers. In particular relevance to heritage: The Department of Museums and Antiquities. Also the reported usability experience (virtual visitor experiences) of some of these tourism organization's online portal/websites.
http://abhinavjournal.com/journal/index.php/ISSN-2277-1166/article/viewFile/261/pdf_54
http://www.sersc.org/journals/IJSEIA/vol8_no12_2014/1.pdf
Hi Uwe,
Have a look at this recent paper Healy, van Riper and Boyd on an Irish case study. I thought it was interesting, and it refers to some other literature as well.
Good luck with your work,
Egbert
Article Low versus high intensity approaches to interpretive tourism...
Please have a look at this paper describing our experreince with a vastly popular visitor centre here in Regensburg. The publkication includes a table to explain the difference beetween visitor centres and museums. Cheers, Matthias
Article Dumas, Astrid; Hauer, Susanne; Ripp, Matthias; Lukat, Andrew...
Kind All,
some years ago the HICIRA project tried to address this topic (or at least something similar...) for some European rural areas.
Unfortunately, it seems difficult to understand which outcomes that project actually reached - the official web site seems to be inactive (http://www.hicira.org/) - and which new research branches it could have given birth to.
Something is still readable on internet, such as:
http://www.enviland.it/settore_1_5_it.html
and here there is the HICIRA Hanbook (2005)
http://www.diba.cat/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=63952a92-928c-4eb9-a698-587bea5cf637&groupId=99058
Best Regards
Speaking as someone involved in site interpretation I must advise you that 'reputable' research in this field as we would normally define it in academic works is likely to be thin on the ground. This stems from two problems. The first is that the sort of questions that it would be most useful to have answered are usually shrouded in commercial confidentiality especially if they are perceived as being either valuable to a rival organisation or critical of the host organisation. The second is that the research methodology has a built in bias in that in my experience only two kinds of visitors are generally motivated enough to take part in the questionnaires that form the basis of the research. These are either those who had such a wonderful time that they feel obligated to sing the institutions praises to the world or those that have had such a negative experience that they wish to achieve catharsis by verbally lashing out at the institution via feedback. This does not give me confidence that the underlying data is robust enough to sustain valuable conclusions.
However, for what it is worth many museums and heritage sites here in the UK do attempt to collate such information. In order to access this you have two options in the first instance; either direct contact any institutions that seem to match those in which you are interested in your own area or access the following websites
www.museumsassociation.org
www.aim-museums.co.uk
and look for any interesting report,
good luck I honestly think that you will need it
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