Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Great Exhibits!: An Exhibit Planning and Construction Handbook for Small Museums

Building informative and interesting exhibits is challenging for small museums. Even museums with minimal budgets can produce quality exhibits with guidance from Great Exhibits! An Exhibit Planning and Construction Handbook for Small Museums. Using research from top exhibit professionals and do-it-yourself installation instructions, small museum staff and volunteers will be able to build professional exhibits. Museum professionals have dedicated years of study to the experiences of museum visitors. Great Exhibits! combines the best academic research that will help small museums understand what needs to go into planning an exhibit with step-by-step instructions that outline the process for planning successful exhibits. Digital interactive technology and simple hands-on experiences are included. To keep up with changing technology, the companion website https://bethsagehansen.wordpress.com/ will be updated regularly to provide resources and current digital technology. The best thing about Great Exhibits! is that features more than 100 FULL-COLOR photographs and illustrations to show you how to create exhibit cases, object mounts, and temporary walls. This practical guide is invaluable for any museum without professional fabricators. Based on practical experiences at small museums across the country and featuring more than 100 full-color photographs and illustrations, Great Exhibits! is an invaluable resource for theoretical guidance and practical assistance to anyone who works or volunteers in a small museum as well as a textbook for museum studies programs. Review Ms. Hansen's extensive experience with small museums qualifies her as an excellence source of information and inspiration for exhibit makers in similar settings. Her practical guide, rich with suggestions and easy-to-use worksheets, will be useful for small museums of any topic or location.--Beverly Serrell, Director, Serrell & Associates and author of "Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach" There are many handbooks about creating exhibitions, but this is the first one I found that really goes into the basics, the nuts and bolts of exhibit planning and installing. It is especially good for people in small museums who wear many - if not all - hats in the process. The many practical examples from label writing to mannequin building show that you don't need a big budget to create compelling exhibitions.--Angela Kipp, collections manager, TECHNOSEUM, Mannheim, Germany, and co-founder and administrator of Registrar Trek About the Author Beth Hansen started her more than twenty years museum career through a graduate program, but she has always worked at very small museums where she was the entire exhibit development/construction staff. Her mix of academic training and practical experience led her to teach workshops on creating exhibits for other small museums. Over the years she has worked with creative volunteers and ingenious museum directors who have come up with great ideas for do-it-ourselves projects. Beth is adjunct faculty in the Museum Studies program at the University of Oklahoma. She developed and teaches the Exhibit Development class for the Museum Studies graduate program at the University of Oklahoma. As a faculty member, she has access to the latest research in visitor studies. Sharing this information with volunteers at small museums is her goal for Great Exhibits!.