This is my annotated bibliography of all the books, articles, and publications I read throughout my fields study. I highly suggest them to anyone interested in the Academy’s history or just the history of natural sciences in general.

Annotated Bibliography

Methodology

 What I wanted to look for in the quantitative research section of my field study was if there was any correlation between the interactivity of a display and its overall attendance/ the age demographic of its visitors.  By finding this out we might be able to infer if more interactive displays attract more visitors than others and have a better chance of getting across information.

The first step in this process was to find an area where I could examine multiple displays that had varying levels of interactive features all at the same time. Fortunately enough I managed to find in the “Island of Evolution” where three such displays were located. They were:

 Galapagos Island: What Do I Eat? / 1905 Expedition (Medium Interactivity)

This display is split into two main parts.  The first part is a brief video documentary about the academies voyage to the Galapagos in 1905/1906 that had no interactive features while the second part is a display of a genetic tree were each button corresponded to a different type of finch found in the Galapagos and would give a brief talk about how that type of finch adapted to better fit its environment.

 Deep Sea Dive (Low Interactivity)

The Deep Sea Dive exhibit is a small enclosed display meant to replicate the feeling of being inside an undersea submersible in which a brief documentary on the academies undersea research  near the Galapagos Island narrated by Dr. John McCosker, former director of the Steinhart Aquarium.

 Collect Samples (High Interactivity)

In this exhibit the viewer uses a motion control stick to virtually collect different bugs and sample specimens like how a naturalist would. Each sample gives you a brief description of what you just collected and how it fits into the ecosystem.  This highly interactive exhibit features a variety of collection options and seemed to be geared for the museums younger audience.

 After choosing these three exhibits I found a bench in which I could easily examine all of three displays and began my data collection. Each time I collected data I:

 Sat at the exact same spot from 2:30-3:00pm on five different days of the week.

- Looked for how many visitors stopped by each exhibit during that time frame

- Took note of how many of the visitors stayed the full length of the exhibit or only a partial amount of time

-Took tote of how many of the visitors seemed to be above or below the age of 18 and marked them as either youth or adult.

-Took general observations about the behavior of each visitor or group of visitors that came through

 Once I have gathered these samples I will total them up and see what patterns emerged.

 Analysis

 After all the samples I have gathered I added up the total number of visitors for each category for each of the five days and then took the average amount of this data. Here is what I have found:

 -The Galapagos Island/ How Do I Eat? Got the highest amount of visitors and the highest average of visitors though only beating out Deep Sea Dive by one

- The Galapagos Island/ How Do I Eat? Had the highest number of notes next indicating irregularities or interesting observations

-Deep Sea Dive had the highest average number of youth

-Deep Sea Dive had the same number of partial visitors as adults but not all partial visitors were adults  

-Collect Samples had the most consistent number of notes

-Collect Samples ha the most consistent number of visitors 

-Collect Samples had the highest amount of visitors that stayed the full length

-Collect Samples had the highest difference between full and partial visits

-Collect Samples had the lowest total visitors 

-Collect Samples had the highest number of youth visitors

Here are the observations that I took while recording this data and how frequently they came up during my field study:

 Galapagos Island: What Do I Eat? / 1905 Expedition

-Majority of visitors gather toward the What Do I Eat? Section of the Galapagos exhibit (2 times)

-People don’t seem to be paying full attention to the Galapagos (4 times)

-Large tour group passed through (+7 adults, partial)

-Most youth (especially under or around 5 years old) hit the buttons then leave without watching the exhibit

- Visitor using the bench to call on their cell phones (3 times)

-Groups seem to gather if others are already watching video but always turn into partial (2 times)

 Deep Sea Dive

-Groups tend to gather around visitors if someone is already watching it (5 times)

 - Most partial visitors are only partial because they walked in halfway through the video which           plays on loop (3 times)

 -A few visitors seemed to hit the button to start the video and when it didn’t immediately start

Collect Samples

-Entirely children with their parents (5 days)

-Most guests stay for more than one play through of game allowing for fewer overall visitors (5)

Overall

-Very few visitors that went to one exhibit went to the others (3 days)

 Total

Average (rounded up)

Interpretation

While at first it might seem that the Galapagos Island: What Do I Eat? / 1905 Expedition got the most visitors suggesting that the medium interactive exhibit was the most successful observations suggest otherwise.  This exhibit had the most observations suggesting that there were far more inconsistencies in the data then any of the other exhibits. Deep Sea Dive got the second highest amount of visitors despite its complete lack of interactive displays besides the encasing dome that surrounds it. However its numbers, both in sheer total and average amounts, came very close to those of the Galapagos Island without the aid of the interactive features which leads me to believe that the interactive features had very little correlation to the amount of total visitors. This is further backed up by the fact that the Collect Samples was the most interactive display yet attracted the fewest total visitors but the highest percentage of full visitors. If interactivity of a display really played such as role into the amount of people that visited it wouldn’t the numbers of visitors of Galapagos and Collect Samples be similar?

The data shows a very minuet gap in numbers between the Galapagos and Deep Sea Dive with a higher number of notes indicates less viewer attentiveness from the Galapagos then Deep Sea Dive meaning that while people were drawn more to the exhibit that featured slightly interactive displays they were overall less attentive. It can also be noted that there is a stronger correlation between the age demographic of the viewer and the level of interactivity in the display. Collect Samples is 100% dependent on viewer participation and it attracted in the highest amount of people younger than 18 and a dramatically lower average number of people over 18. Collect Samples had also the highest full participation rate out of any of the three exhibits by a large margin.

From all this we can see a border where if an exhibit is 100% interactive it gets a higher viewer attention rate but a less diverse age demographic then those that are partially or non interactive.  Partially interactive exhibits attract a high amount of attendance but a far less attentive one while completely non interactive exhibits get a similar number of viewers as the partial ones but more people attentive partial visitors that are drawn in by a crowd. The data also suggests that people are less likely to gather and see an exhibit that is more interactive which explains why there was such a low turnout for the Collect Samples.

  These patterns are backed up by research done by Paul Zelevansky in the article Crisscrossing the Interface: The Design, Display and Evaluation of an Interactive Computer Exhibit were he states that more interactive designs in displays tend to get children more involved with concepts that they might not otherwise grasp.  But he does go on to question the viewer attentiveness for these exhibits by saying:

 “Someone is ultimately constructing the conditions and the terms of these encounters, even if the results appear to be open-ended. Trading quiet reflection for stimulation and speed may not be an educational bargain if the manipulation of the pro-gram becomes its own reward.”(Zelevansky, 1995)

In conclusion if a museum wants a higher number of people to see there exhibit then they should make it slightly interactive. If they want a higher participation rate in for their exhibit but a less diverse age demographic then they should make it 100% interactive. If they want people to actually grasp what they are interacting with, that is still up in the air.

References

Zelevansky, P. (1995). Crisscrossing the Interface: The Design, Display and Evaluation of an Interactive Computer Exhibit. Leonardo, 28(2), 137–142. doi:10.2307/1576135

Today instead of going to my normal destination of the academy I took a little detour and instead went to the Legion of Honor Fine Arts Museum in San Fransisco. While this might not sound at all relevant to my natural history museum field study work I still found the experience very enlightening and there for blog worthy.

The Legion of Honor is a step away from the more modern feel and interface of the California Academy of Sciences. Located where the bay meets the Pacific Ocean, the legion stands tall in a more neoclassical frame of building who’s court yard is guarded one of the casts of Rodin’s “The Thinker”. There is only one small entrance to the museum that funnels you right to a swarm of docents who occupy almost every room in the museum. Once you pay to get in (you can either get general admission or pay double to see the special touring exhibit down stairs) you enter a large room with passage ways that go every which way.  I first visited downstairs to see the touring exhibit called “The Cult of Beauty: The Victorian Advent Garde 1860-1900″. The exhibition space was well crafted and full beautiful works of the time with well thought out informational pieces along the way, my only complaint is that it literally exited through the gift shop. But this idea of the museum slightly shifted when I went through the rest of the museum.

The art was still magnificent but I felt there were far less informative plaques around telling me about the history of the pieces and there placement seemed to be based off of who donated the piece to the museum. The main information source seemed to be the docents and the guided tourers (which cost money to rent) unlike the academy where there is always a constant stream of unwarranted information. I am not saying I prefer one to the other or that one is better, its just a strange transition spending so much time in one then jumping to the other it really made me realize the differences.

I still thought the art was very beautiful and the experience was overall enjoyable, I wish I had come away with a bit more information of what I had just seen rather then fragments of knowledge bound together by aesthetic effects. Tomorrow I am back to the Academy for one farewell visit and a guest lecture on Neutrinos before I head back to Washington on Wednesday. I am now done gathering data for my quantitative research project I just need to graph it and figure out what patterns emerge from my data (the answers might surprise you). Also by the end of this week I should also have the long awaited annotated bibliography of all the readings I have done this month, exciting. That is all for now, I will be back with one of more concluding post to this blog before I call this field study finished.

Legion of Honor by sfgamchick on Flicker

The California Academy of Sciences: 150 Years of Science in Action   

Julian Vercoutere

In the heart of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park is the oldest and one the most dedicated scientific institutions in the Western United States. The California Academy of Sciences is part natural history museum, part aquarium, part planetarium, part research lab, and part educational facility all working together in order to “explain, explore, and protect the natural world.”  But how has an institution survived over 150 years of dramatic world change, catastrophic natural disasters, cut throat city politics, devastating budget cuts, and every other minor pitfall imaginable along the way? It’s because the academy still holds true to its core tenants and designs exhibits that are ahead of their times as well as work with the scientific community and the greater public to give the most informative experience possible. With its massive collection of over 26 million specimens, its world class staff, and its state of the art facility that was voted “The Greenest Museum on Earth” in 2006, it is well equipped for this task[1][2]. But in order to understand how the academy became the respected and cherished resource it is today we have to go back and examine its past through its various incarnations.

History of The Califorina Academy of Sciences

(Note: it is only longer then 5 pages because of the citations. It was exactly 5 pages when they were inserted)

After finishing my essay history paper on the museum I realized that my hours and hours of research could not all fit into a simple five page double spaced format. So I thought I would put some of the overflow of ideas and stories that I found on here as a sort of “deleted scenes section” or a “directors cut”

1. Rollo Beck, the man that was behind the 1905/1906 expedition to the Galapagos, was a famed naturalist but also scrutinized by the scientific community for over collecting endangered species. According to records he personally killed 3 out of 4 of the last of a subspecies of tortoise for scientific collection.

2. When arriving in San Francisco Harbor, the crew of the 1905/1906 expedition tossed all their bloodied and stained clothes that they wore during the expedition overboard in order to avoid questions from the Department of Health.

3. Since its opening the Steinhart Aquarium has attracted millions of visitor’s since its opening including the Crown Prince of Japan and his holiness the Dalli Lama who bonded with the penguin Orbit.

4. In 1980 the academy attempted to keep a great white shark named Sandy in captivity. The great white shark is only one of two fish species, the other being the fossil fish known as the ceolacanth. From the start Sandy was having problems. She would ram into the slight five degree turns in the aquarium’s Round About exhibit as she swam and was beginning to behave erratically. The steel reinforcements from the tank were causing Sandy’s electromagnetic senses to go haywire making her slowly lose control of her own mobility. The academy then did something that no institution had done before: they let Sandy back into the wild. Sandy wasn’t the longest shark kept in captivity but she was the only one that made it out alive.

5. The majority of the new academy is made of recycled materials. The structure is mostly recycled steel and recycled concrete, with cut up blue jeans acting as a cheap environmentally friendly insulation.

6. The academy briefly experimented with live birds in the Southern Swamp extension of the Steinhart aquarium but after one of the Macaws was frightened by a camera mans flash bulb it flew into the alligator it and was quickly eaten, the idea was thrown off the table.

7. Gary Larson, creator of The Far Side comic series,  made a series of cartoons for the old museum in an exhibit known as The Far Side of Science. While popular, the cartoons did not continue on to the academy’s new incarnation.

8. Until the 2004 remodeling of the museum, there was a serious problem of visitor’s tossing coins into open animal pits such as the seals and the alligators. After autopsying one seal the staff found $7.54 in change in its stomach, including toxic metal coins from World War 2. The director of the Steinhart aquarium tried to stop this but found that his staff, who were allowed to keep any coin they cleaned up, were just placing more coins at the bottom of the pools in order to encourage more of this behavior. In response, the director also began to also encourage this behavior saying “toss a coin make a wish and we will buy a brand new fish!” Sure enough the amount of coins that were tossed into the pool greatly increased and each year the academy raised over $200 in change until the program was shut down.

There are many more interesting facts that you can read about in all the books and articles on my bibliographic side bar. One of the resources that I was not able to put up on there was an old program guide given out back in 1932 for the opening of the Simson African hall that features pictures and information about the displays as well as staff information from the time it was published. Just thought that was an interesting bit of flavor to add.

By Julian Vercoutere

By Julian Vercoutere

By Julian Vercoutere

Originally this post was going to be about Life: A Cosmic Story, the full dome show that is playing currently at the Morrison Planetarium. But I faced the same issue that I faced during the Dean Lecture a few weeks ago: no matter how state of the art the planetarium is, they still get dark thus making the note taking process nigh impossible. To sum up what I remember Life: A Cosmic story is a high tech introduction to the basics of life and how it got started on earth packed with up to date scientific information, narrated by Jody Foster. It was a very informative and had amazing visuals that I highly suggest but if I were to summarize it I might as well give an evolutionary biology 101 lecture. Instead I will talk about Penguins.

In the interest of learning all I can from the Academies educational programs I went to one of the weekly events that I had not yet attended. Every Saturday a crowd gathers at the end of the African Hall to watch them feed the one of the few living animals in the area, the African Penguins.  This endangered breed of penguins lives only in the south cape of Africa and are often referred to as “Jackass Penguins” because of their braying call. The academy has a few breeding pairs of penguins, which they mark with the same color arm bands, in order to further increase the population of the species. The academy is responsible for hatching over 100 African penguins to date but the most remarkable one they have isn’t one they hatched.

Pierre the Penguin was born in Maryland in 1983 and is now a whopping 29 years old (the average life expectancy of an African Penguin is only 15). Pierre is a very special penguin because he is the first ever bird to have its bald spots restored.  In 2004 Pierre when Pierre molted (penguins molt all their feathers off at once) his caretakers noticed that he hadn’t grown back all this feathers. Feathers are vitally important to all birds but to penguins in particular. Penguins have more feathers then any other bird, about 70 per square inch, and each of those feathers is covered in an oil that creates a barrier between the water and the penguins skin because it is  important that penguins maintain a very high internal body temperature, much higher then humans.  This high body temperature allows them to digest the entire fish, including the bones. With Pierre’s old age and lack of feathers, there was a very high possibility that he would contract hypothermia and die.

Pierre’s handlers ran some tests and found that there was nothing physically wrong with him besides some low grade kidney problems. Deciding to act, the academy designed a specially fitted wet suit, similar to a scuba diver, that would cover Pierre’s bald spots and allow him to swim freely with out the fear of Hypothermia once again. Pierre is the first penguin in the world to have such a suit, but he has set a trend for animal caretakers around the globe who have also taken to designing similar wet suits for sick animals. In 2008 after several trials and treatments Pierre’s feathers grew back and the vest was removed. To this day Pierre still acts as leader to the 19 penguins at the California Academy of Sciences.

Here are my They Say/I say writing assignments for weeks 5/6.  I will upload my edited version along with partner comments when I receive  them.  For now I here is my original versions of my assignments.

My home internet connection has started to fail….again so I have had to move to the Starbucks a few blocks away in order to keep blogging. Hopefully the problem will be fixed sooner then later but considering the constancy that our provider has failed to fix it  this seems unlikely….

They Say 9

They Say 10

This is a prize-moving  presentation on the organizational structure, mission statement, and staff of the California Academy of Sciences

The Califorina Academy of Sciences

By Julian Vercoutere

“In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeeded at adapting themselves to their environment; this process is called natural selection”
-Charles Darwin

THE EXPEDITION JOURNALS
Julian Vercoutere

The California Academy of Sciences is the oldest natural history museum in the Western United states and while wandering its halls I found one of the oldest objects in its collection (1). In the far left hand corner of the museum, almost so far in the back that it is unnoticeable, rests a display case no more than ten feet across. In this case rests some tools, diagrams, and mounted pages of a book. These are the sort of things that might be passed by or overlooked in a the midst of busy day in order to look at more exciting exhibits such as the aquarium or the rainforest dome, but with my interest already being peeked and for the sake of feeling like I got my memberships worth I took five minutes to look it over. What I found opened my eyes and filled me with a whole new view on the academy. These pages belonged to one of the expedition logs from the academies journey to the Galapagos Island in 1905/1906 and these tools were replicas of the navigation tools used on that very voyage. As I looked deeper into these journals history, I found that they were an instrumental piece of the academies past and would play pivotal part in the institutions survival.

Evocative Objects- Journal

So I wasn’t able to make it to the lecture in Berkley that I wanted to go tonight, but none the less I come back baring new information. Instead of writing about DNA like I originally intended to, I will write about what I learned today at the Steinhart Aquarium.

The first part I went to was Dive into the Reef in which a member of the staff gears up in full scuba attire with a wireless microphone rig and goes into the tank to feed the fishes and talk about the exhibit. The reef on display is meant to replicate the conditions of the coral reefs off the coast of Philippines which are some of the most diverse reef systems in the world. While home to a vast number of different species of tropical fish, the exhibit also plays host to a variety of coral. Coral structures are actually colonies made up of hunderds of tiny anemones like creatures known as polyps. Polyps group together and tend to reproduce asexually to build up large structures over a long period of time to give an example, it can take a colony a full year to grow as little as an inch. The polyps can also reproduce by letting go eggs and sperm into the water in the hopes that the currents will carry the genetic material to a rock face so a entirely new colony can start forming. Interestingly enough, this type of reproduction only occurs under the light of the full moon. Why? I will have to do more in depth research to find out but its what I was told by the staff.

Coral Reef by Slick Vic on Fliker

Most corals are threatened and at sever risk of losing their habitats due to rapid climate change and human interference. Not only do they take a very long time to reproduce, they also are extremely brittle, and require a very delicate balance of sunlight and water temperature to stay alive. Polyps rely on the allege that lives inside there rock like shells for food. Allege gather light from the sun and turn it into energy through photosynthesis which in turn provides enough nutrients for the polyps to survive.This is because the clear water of the Philippines have very little nutrients in them due to its toasty 74 degree Fahrenheit temperature, but that is just the prefect conditions for the fish and polyps to prosper in. If these conditions change the fish will die, the allege will burn up, and the polyps will starve leaving nothing but a hollow skeletal structure.

The second exhibit I visited was Animal Attraction, a display of various bizarre animal mating rituals from around the globe just in time for Valentines Day. While I didn’t spend as much time in this small exhibit, I did find two examples very…interesting.

The triplewart seadevil is a deep sea fish in the anglerfish family. When it is time for the seadevil to mate the much larger female lures the tiny male to it which then attaches to the female near a vent. It is then slowly absorbed into the females body as little more then an appendage that fertilizes her eggs. Another odd reproduction method comes from the Anthia’s, small tropical fish. Anthia’s lives in a large harem of one male (which is marked with a large square on its side) and many female. When the male of a harem dies for any reason, the oldest and largest female changes sexes, becomes the new male and takes control of the harem.In the world of science sometimes you learn things you just didn’t want to know…

Female Anthia by SaraAllyn on Flicker