Edinburgh has been able to combine a new Museum (Museum of Scotland) with a new built Science Centre (Dynamic Earth).

It has been a team project because we work as a complement units.
It's a pity it is far away for you to be able to see it, but you can visit the web pages on:
http://www.dynamicearth.co.uk/
http://www.nms.ac.uk/

I hope these can help you.

Yours,

Vicen

"Robert M. Ross" wrote:

 Michelle,

I would be delighted to find out what you learn.

The organization at which I work (the Paleontological Research Institution, in New York State, US) is now building a new exhibits facility to be called The Museum of the Earth. We hired on-staff exhibit designers from a large science center and hired an outside exhibit design firm that normally works with science centers; these people work together with the more object-oriented geologists and paleontologists (like myself) of our organization. The idea is to combine the best of each world -- to have areas of stunning specimens (dinosaur models, mastodon skeleton, etc), outstanding natural history art, and a "Pleistocene garden," woven together with hands-on open-ended "discovery labs", "object theaters" that combine audio-visual tracks with museum objects, and interactive computer stations. We have had to do all of it on a very limited budget (we had to cut some areas we really wanted!). In the end, the key will be good educators and education docents working together with visitors to do interesting things with fossils and rocks, in part to help visitors play the role of scientists.

We have found making an interesting and accessible exhibit on geologic time, and describing concisely how geologic time is measured, to be very challenging; I am afraid we have not conquered it as we had hoped. We struggled to do justice to Earth processes, and finally decided that, instead of using what have come to call "books on the wall" (excessive text), processes are best approached in dynamic media -- video, computer graphics, and person-to-person programming. We don't have much mechanical or electronic wizardry -- it's very expensive, and perhaps of debatable educational value. For various reasons (not least of which is our paleontological roots), our exhibits are organized chronologically through geologic time, with processes brought in at relevant points in the "narrative." Rather than treating all times equally, we emphasize several geological intervals that are well represented by local rock sequences, and use video and a smaller number of objects to tell the stories that link through time the highlighted intervals. We are several years into the planning and construction phase, and it's due to open in late spring 2003.

I don't think I've answered your questions, but that's my quick version of one organization facing some similar issues.

There was an article in the Journal of Geoscience Education in 2001 (or 2000?) of some geoscientists from New Zealand who built a wide variety of "science centery" geoscience exhibits that well illustrated processes. If you can't get ahold of the article and you're interested, I'll try to find it. The literature on how to do geoscience exhibits well in relatively small and scattered, and you may need to take inspiration from other collections-oriented fields; I would be interested to learn about what interesting sources you turn up.

Best wishes for success,
Rob Ross

At 3/22/2002 02:26 PM +0000, you wrote:

I am currently researching an assignment for the interpretation module of a
heritage management Masters degree at the Ironbridge Institute. I
aminterested to know if anyone has any ideas/good examples of/knows of a
good book on, how traditional museums with geological collections can
compete with the new purpose built science centres springing up around the
country. How can a low budget local authority museum keep up with these
interactive centres? I would also be interested to hear what you feel are
the concepts about geology that are hardest to get across to the general
public. So far the main stumbling block seems to be the enormity of the
geological time scale, few people can appreciate/understand 'millions of
years'as a concept. Anyway any comments or ideas would be very welcome.
Thank you.

Robert M. Ross
Director of Education
Paleontological Research Institution
1259 Trumansburg Road
Ithaca, NY 14850
U.S.A.
tel: 01 607 273 6623 x18
FAX: 01 607 273 6620
email: [log in to unmask]
PRI website: <www.priweb.org>