Research Roundup
February 22, 2010

Tools for the future
The near future
Social trends, etc.
Other articles, essays, and recent items of interest
Refresh and reflect

Tools for the future:
  1. From the National Arts Marketing Project, wise advice from Peter Linett on audience research: Thinking About Audience Research? Four Rules for the Perplexed.  Read part 1 and part 2.  
  2. Adventures in Executive Dashboards from Idealware. "It's easy for your organization to get overwhelmed with data. Executive dashboards can provide an overview of your organizational health at a glance. But how do you actually create one?"
  3. From Booklist, the Top 10 Books on the Environment for 2010. Also get current climate data and projections from the NOAA Climate Service Portal at http://www.climate.gov/.
  4. Some videos on the future of museums from thought leaders in the field:
    • Eric Siegel (New York Hall of Science) on "the optimal museum experience and how we can map those kinds of experiences onto our schools."
    • Talks on The Future of Museum Collecting from the Museum of Vancouver.

The near future:
  1. Many museums rely on funding from their states, either directly or indirectly, so it's important to have reliable data about the state — and future — of state budgets. A recent report from Deloitte (2010 Industry Outlook — U.S. State Government) predicts that "state governments will face a number of significant and continuing challenges in 2010. From budget deficits to runaway Medicaid costs to infrastructure challenges, the new year is shaping up to be perhaps one of the most difficult in recent history. But there is some light at the end of the tunnel." State of the States 2010: How the Recession Might Change States, from the Pew Center on the States, starts with an even gloomier picture: "Two years after the nation fell into the longest recession since the 1930s, states still are groping to find the bottom of this grueling fiscal crisis amid double-digit unemployment, historic revenue drops and predictions of at least a couple more years of eye-popping budget deficits." But the Pew report goes on to describe how some states are starting to reshape their policies; it also offers a guide to the state elections this year. For additional background, there is a chart (and description) of where the various states get their revenues at http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=430433.   
  2. The future of agriculture from Future Agricultures.
  3. The future of small business from the Intuit Future of Small Business Series. The research brief on Today's Hobbyists are Tomorrow's Hobbypreneurs resonates with the myCulture trend described in Museums & Society 2034: Trends and Potential Futures: "We are seeing the emergence of a cultural shift that may prove to be a full-blown creative renaissance. The result will be a generation of young adults with more extensive creative pursuits than any other recent generation. This generation grew up with a broad palette of digital tools and creative resources; as a result, they are demonstrating an extraordinarily high level of creative output and creative consumption."
  4. The future of historic house museums from Jack Braunlein at the Greater Hudson Heritage Network (spotted by our friends at the Museum Association of New York).

Social trends, etc.:
  1. The Girl Scouts have teamed up with pollsters Harris Interactive to produce a report on Good Intentions: The Beliefs and Values of Teens and Tweens Today. According to the press release, "Over the course of the past twenty years, many things about how youth think have changed. Considering how much more the youth of today are exposed to thanks to the Internet, these changes may not be surprising. At the same time, there are some issues, like drugs, where the attitudes of tweens and teens have not changed much in the last two decades. ... [O]ne of the biggest changes found was that many more teens are accepting of gay and lesbian relationships and far fewer find them unacceptable than was the case in 1989." Other attitudes covered by the study include smoking, sex before marriage, suicide, drugs, abortion, the environment, diet, and diversity. 
  2. The Advocate offers a slightly tongue-in-cheek look at the Gayest Cities in America, using such criteria as same-sex households per capita, the number of gay elected officials, and the number of gay bars. Although the author admits that the final calculations are "arbitrary," they underscore a serious conclusion: "a slew of secondary cities are becoming gay epicenters." For a more scholarly look at how museums are working to attract gay visitors and supporters, see the spring 2008 issue of Museums & Social Issues, "Where is Queer?"
  3. How Millennials Use Tech at Work. According to the consulting firm Accenture, the Millennial generation (roughly 14-27 years old) are so acculturated to technology that "They don't see bright lines between work and personal, virtual and physical, sanctioned and prohibited. It's not, 'Would you approve this, boss?' but, 'Whatever gets the job done.'" One upside: an eagerness to embrace new collaborative technologies. One downside: an indifference to institutional IT policies. (Spotted on ReadWriteWeb.) 
  4. CBS MoneyWatch asks, Is the Gender Pay Gap Over? They introduce evidence for the following trends: Women have fared better during the recession. Women are on the verge of holding the majority of full-time jobs. Women have seen their pay rise faster than men’s during the downturn. Women make up 58 percent of college students. But it's too early to say whether this evidence really adds up to the end of the gender gap. Worth reading in conjunction with The Labor Market, Then and Now: Changing Realities in the 21st Century, a report from the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University. The authors argue that "Skyrocketing unemployment is only one of a number of profound changes transforming the U.S. labor market, workforce, and education system in the first decade of the 21st Century. The new realities affecting jobs, careers, and retirement are transforming Americans' attitudes toward work."

Other articles, essays, and recent items of interest:
  1. From our Canadian colleagues at Hill Strategies Research, two new studies: a look at cultural workers in Canada's largest cities and a look at how the arts can contribute to the quality of life and the social and economic well-being of Canada's small and rural communities. The details may be different for communities south of the border but the trends and analysis remain the same.
  2. The February issue of BioTechniques, an international journal in the life sciences, includes an article on Museum Laboratories: Where Art Meets Science.  
  3. The full text of the latest University Museums and Collections Journal is available at http://edoc.hu-berlin.de/browsing/umacj/. Incorporates the Proceedings of the 8th Conference of the International Committee of ICOM for University Museums and Collections (UMAC), held in Manchester, England, in September 2008.
  4. The NEA's New Troublemaker, a profile of Rocco Landesman, new chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, from Newsweek magazine.

Refresh and reflect:
  1. The Cake of the Future, where "augmented reality ... [meets] the pastry world."
  3. Visualizing Science — stunning images from the winners of the 2009 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, co-sponsored by the journal Science and the National Science Foundation.

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