Research Roundup
Date: April 19, 2009
 


Tools for the future:
  • In 2008 the Council on Library and Information Services (CLIR) convened a panel of experts from inside and out of the library field to contemplate the question “How should we be rethinking the research library in a swiftly changing information landscape?” The full report, No Brief Candle: Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century, is available here. Although the focus here is libraries (and particularly libraries that support advanced academic research), there are lessons for all museums as well – especially in the discussion of barriers to institutional change. Many of the barriers listed in the report make just as much sense if you replace the word “libraries” with “museums” (as we’ve done here):
  • [Museums] tend to be risk-averse organizations; to remain relevant, they must be willing to experiment and innovate.
  • A sense of ownership—for example, of staff or collections—has kept [museums] from engaging in truly collective work.  . . .
  • At this time, we do not know who will be responsible for analyzing and interpreting various kinds of dynamic information resources and making them available to the public. If this responsibility falls to the [museums], how will the [museums] address it?

Social trends, etc.:
  • Despite the unsettled economy – in fact, probably because of it – movie ticket sales are up in 2009. This was also true during the Great Depression, when the movies and other forms of cultural expression paradoxically thrived, as literary scholar Morris Dickstein explains in a recent article for the Los Angeles Times: “How song, dance and movies bailed us out of the Depression.” According to Dickstein, “The engine of the arts in the ’30s was not escapism, as we sometimes imagine, but speed, energy and movement at a time of economic stagnation and social malaise.” Will this also be true in the months ahead?
  •  “Racial and ethnic minorities are driving the nation’s population growth and increasing diversity among its younger residents.”
  • “The next decade promises massive growth of the senior population, especially in suburbs unaccustomed to housing older people.”
  • For more on the future of America’s aging population, see this new report from the MetLife Mature Market Institute: Discovering What Matters: Balancing Money, Medicine and Meaning. The researchers surveyed more than 1,000 “older” Americans (aged 45 to 74) to “explore how people rebalance their priorities over time and juggle various competing aspects of life including money, medicine (a metaphor for health) and meaning, in order to live the ‘Good Life.’ Having purpose was found to be a differentiator of those living the Good Life” (summary from the SharpBrains blog). Many of the activities deemed “integral to the good life” are supported by museums, including “spending time with friends and family”; “enjoying personal interests (e.g., hobbies, travel)”; “helping make things better for others (e.g., volunteering)”; and “enhancing your brain functionality via mentally stimulating activities.”
  • The nonprofit sector might be the direct beneficiary of the aging American population, according to an analysis in the Wall Street Journal spurred by the passage of the Edward M. Kennedy National Service Act  at the end of March. “The combination of growing numbers of Americans in their fifties and sixties who are rethinking retirement on account of the recession and the recent passage of the [Act] could spur new interest in nonprofit ‘encore’ careers.” (Summary from the Philanthropy News Digest; the original WSJ article is available here.) 

Other articles, essays, and recent items of interest:

  • The 2008 Attraction Attendance Report summarizes attendance trends at commercial theme parks and waterparks around the world. The most visited theme park in 2008? No surprise, it was the Magic Kingdom in Florida, with over 17 million visitors. According to the analysis in this report, however, “destination parks [like Disney World have been] hit harder than regional parks” – and the prediction for 2009 is fewer visitors to all such attractions. 

Refresh and Reflect:

  • Science webcams from around the world. Many from zoos or other locations with fauna (including a biology lab at the University of South Carolina and the shores of Loch Ness). Another index of educational webcams is here.

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