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On Thu, 24 Aug 1995, Christopher Whittle wrote: > What the UCMP and the MCZ and all those other "research" museums overlook > is the fact that inherent in the word museum is the word research. It > seems that they add that title to the name of their museums (though not > officially) so that they do not have to waste their resources on displays > and interpretation for the public. What they fail to realize is that > public interest fans the fires that provide them their research money. I > expressed this idea while a student at one of these institutions, I was > told by a director of another that he saw some sense in my thoughts but > still they plod along like cold blooded brontosaurs feeding in a > swamp...I hope your son has the opportunity to visit some real museums. > As one of the UCMP "virtual museum" Worldwide Web designers, could I just cut in with my two rupees' worth here: We know that public interest in our work is important to keeping us going. Mr. De Long saw us at probably the worst possible time; we're still in the process of moving our collections, and everyone's priority right now is getting what I'm told is the nation's fourth largest fossil collection into new quarters, safely, securely, with minimum damage and confusion. The public displays will come in time -- in fact the T. rex mounted skeleton is coming along very nicely indeed -- and we have more display space in our new building than we had in the old one. It's just gonna take a while. Nome wasn't built in a day. We don't consider public outreach a waste of resources, as Mr. Whittle's rather offensive post implied (what the ?!$#!! did he mean, "real museums"?!) For the past couple of years we've had a public outreach coordinator on our staff, and she's doing a great job. The brontosaurs weren't cold-blooded and didn't plod in a swamp, and in fact shouldn't be called brontosaurs, and UCMP isn't nearly as wrapped up in academic elitist esoterica as Whittle would have it. Don't condemn us just because Mr. De Long saw us on a bad hair day. > > One of our favorite places is the University of California Museum > > of Paleontology - the UCMP. On the Internet, the UCMP is a > > marvelous virtual, interactive museum. Adam Engst even wrote in > > one of his books that he could "spend the rest of the afternoon > > here, browsing the exhibits, and all without hurting my feet." > > > > http://ucmp1.berkeley.edu/welcome.html Thanks; we're glad you like it. > > > > We first walked past a wall of news clippings and pictures of > > paleontological digs. We soon found ourselves in the central > > stairwell in front of a banner that said "University of California > > Museum of Paleontology." There was an impressive Tyrannosaurus > > skull behind glass. On the next floor up there was a similarly > > impressive Triceratops skull. The hip bones of a Tyrannosaurus (a > > different Tyrannosaurus) hung suspended in the stairwell. The hip bones now have vertebrae and legs attached to them. . . > > > > That was pretty much it. The UCMP had just moved and not all of > > the public exhibits had been unpacked yet. By mid-September an > > entire Tyrannosaurus Rex will fill up the three-story stairwell. > > But the public fossil collection was very small. The UCMP is a > > _research_ museum, not a display museum: it is for twenty-five- > > year-old graduate students fascinated by posters with titles like > > "Acid Rain an Agent of Extinction at the K-T Boundary - Not!" This > > research museum is not designed for five-year-olds, or for thirty- > > five-year-olds who don't know as much about geology and chemistry > > as they should. You were looking at stop-gap exhibits -- actually posters that had been previously presented at meetings by assorted grad students and other museum riff-raff. We're working on public exhibits that will interest five-year-olds, two-year-olds, and even pre-meds. We don't have the option of closing the building while new exhibits are prepared, because we're right in the middle of a huge building that houses classrooms and the library. > > > > I stood in the stairwell. I looked at the few impressive fossils. > > I thought to myself, "Let's get back to my office computer, so > > that we can see the real University of California Museum of > > Paleontology Dinosaur exhibit at: > > > > http://ucmp1.berkeley.edu/expo/dinoexpo.html Try http://ucmp1.berkeley.edu/diapsids/dinosaur.html. It's been updated recently, and I hope will start growing soon; it's newer than the old dinoexpo.html page. . . > > > > "The real museum," I thought, "has audio narration by the > > discoverers of dinosaurs. The real museum has many more bones - a > > Diplodocus skeleton, for one thing. The real museum has detailed > > exhibits on dinosaur evolution and geology... > > > > "No - wait. > > > > "_This_ is the real museum. The Internet Web site is just the > > "virtual" image - an electronic reflection - of this place." > > Which is the real museum? Both are. Cyberexhibits can't take the place of real bones and shells before your eyes. But on the other hand, in some ways the WWW can convey, better than a physical exhibit can, what we actually do -- especially the complexity, the interrelatedness of the fields that we work in, that touch on and inspire each other. You still have to walk through a museum in a linear sequence; on the Net you're not bound to any such sequences; you can go all over the place. WWW exhibits are a lot easier to update quickly as new information comes in; they can be set up faster; you can exhibit things on the WWW that are hard to build an interesting physical exhibit out of, or that are rare, or ephemeral. You can even search our collections -- try walking up and asking to do that at a display-oriented museum! In some ways, the Web is a better medium for presenting the museum as we see it -- not just a collection of bones, but a collection of bones that is part of a long scientific tradition and continuing area of research, with connections to branches of science from molecular biology to behavior. In other respect, physical exhibits remain superior -- they're both part of the real museum, both have their proper functions, and they should not be confused with each other. Ben Waggoner University of California Museum of Paleontology Berkeley, CA 94720 bmw@uclink2.berkeley.edu http://ucmp1.berkeley.edu/people/bmw/bmw.html
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