From ‘listener’ to ‘speaker’ museum visitors: guest book as a means of dialogue

Abstract

Museum visitor studies acknowledge guest books as a potential source of information and a means of dialogue both among visitors and between visitors and museum staff. Nevertheless, the guest book is still under-used in the Italian museum context. Assuming this gap, this study aims at enlarging the understanding of that audience development method by an exploratory case study. More specifically, the guest book related to the main temporary exhibition, managed by an Italian Civic Museum in Lombardy, has been carried out through sentiment analysis. Findings introduce the taxonomy of ‘non-active’, ‘pre-active’, ‘active’ and ‘pro-active’ users, with the last two categories representing dialogue and visitor engagement in the museum evaluation process. Additional research paths on the correlation between the guest book form and the active users’ attitude are suggested. The case study also encourages more investigation on accountability and reporting within museum discourse.