Evaluation of the socialization process of the sites of the Sierra de Atapuerca at the Museum of Human Evolution in Burgos

Gemma Sebares Valle

Hernandez Cardona, Francesc Xavier Sebares Valle, Gemma

Studies of the public in museums and cultural facilities have a long tradition. However, in recent times they have been carried out mostly in works based on visitor surveys, which has meant that the results are basically subjective and that the information collected is mainly, or only, the reflection of the people who visit the cultural or museographic facility. This fact greatly limits the objective results that can be obtained to carry out improvements in the performance of the facilities. However, at the beginning of the 20th century in Anglo-Saxon countries more objective lines of study based on the observation of the behavior of people visiting museums or various cultural facilities had been developed, but they were no longer carried out in depth due to the economic and time cost they entailed. Taking this into account, one of the main objectives of the study carried out in my doctoral thesis has been to recover quantitative analyses, making an innovative methodological update, applicable to any museographic space. This methodological innovation is based on an empirical evaluation, both in terms of data collection, which is based on an Android application designed within the framework of the thesis, and in an exhaustive statistical analysis of the data collected. The case study used was the Museum of Human Evolution in Burgos (MEH), chosen for being a recent, large-scale facility and for its theme around Prehistory and Human Evolution. Therefore, recovering previous ideas and studies, the digital tool that I have conceived allows analyzing the time that each of the people evaluated spends observing each of the museum spaces and resources, as well as the way they move throughout the exhibition. Thus, in the case study of the thesis, the degrees of interest, attention and attraction that these spaces and resources generate could be directly observed. The results obtained allowed proposing simple corrective measures to improve visits to the MEH. Both methods of collection and analysis, interrelated, provide efficiency at different levels: 1) Objectivity, due to the lack of interaction between the evaluator and the evaluated person. 2) Collection of several data simultaneously (four stopwatches and the order of the route). 3) Reduction to a minimum of possible errors since the data collection is automatically loaded into a database. 4) Faster and more economical processing of the collected data.

The presented project aims to validate the current configuration of the application in order to demonstrate it in a larger environment such as the Galerie de l’Homme (GH) at the Musée de l’Homme and progress in a scalable process planned throughout the TLR6 by demonstrating that in the corresponding GH environment. Along these lines, the demonstration of the Android application will also allow expanding the statistical analysis method, performing analyses that were not tested throughout the completion of the doctoral thesis and thus improving the performance of CRONOS.apk From this point on, the final objective is to finish improving the application until reaching TRL9, which would mean being able to create a tool so that museums, museum sites, archaeological parks or similar facilities could easily monitor the performance of their facilities aimed at the visiting public. The mid-term objective, however, is to reach TRL7, creating a new i-DEPOT registry, after having demonstrated the current tool over the two years that are expected to be spent testing the current tool in new environments. This new registry could expand the expectations of the current tool by making it more efficient than it already is. With this, the improved tool could be offered to different public agents for the development of public policies of the General Directorate of Archives, Libraries, Museums and Heritage of the Department of Culture of the Generalitat of Catalonia, as well as to potential private museums that would like to evaluate their facilities, knowing the real behavior of visitors.

Museums; Cultural Facilities; Public Studies; Visitor Surveys; Subjective Results; Objective Results; Performance Improvements; Observation of Behavior; Quantitative Analyses; Methodological Update; Museographic Space; Empirical Evaluation; Data Collection; Android Application; Statistical Analysis; Case Study; Museum of Human Evolution in Burgos (MEH); Prehistory; Human Evolution; Digital Tool; Time Spent; Museum Spaces; Museum Resources; Movement Analysis; Exhibition; Degrees of Interest; Attention; Attraction; Corrective Measures; Visit Improvement; Objectivity; Lack of Interaction; Simultaneous Data Collection; Stopwatches; Route Order; Error Reduction; Automatic Data Loading; Database; Faster Processing; Economical Processing