Measuring Museum Impact and Performance: Theory and Practice

by John W. Jacobsen

Overview

Based on extensive research and decades of experience, museum analyst and planner John W. Jacobsen provides both the theoretical underpinnings and the operational pragmatics of measuring any museum's intentional impact and performance by using 1,025 indicators drawn from 51 expert sources. Measuring Museum Impact and Performance: Theory and Practice provides museum professionals internationally with a clear, very open process that will improve their museum's value and performance by selecting indicators that monitor whether they are realizing their desired public, private, personal and institutional values. The book is not prescriptive, but liberating, as the framework recognizes that each museum needs to decide on its own purposes and priorities.

The book is organized in two parts: "Part 1: Theory" is scholarly and builds on the museum field’s rich literature; and "Part 2: Practice" provides step-by-step methods for any museum to set up its own dashboard of prioritized impact and performance indicators. Substantive attachments include: the list of the 51 source documents for the MIIP indicators; definitions of terms and data fields; a long list of precedented museum impacts; measurement formulas and worksheet templates, filled in for a sample museum; and the MIIP 1.0 database available online.

Readers will get the following benefits:
A literature review of prior work on measuring museum valueAn analysis of eleven well-established evaluation frameworks that synthesize into a revolutionary, yet practical, Museum Theory of ActionA robust and searchable menu of 1,025 existing and aspirational indicators (the MIIP 1.0 database) that you can use to start your own selectionAn analysis of the MIIP database using the Theory of Action that reveals 14 areas of potential museum impacts and benefitsA process to select and prioritize your museum’s intentional purposes and desired impactsA process to determine, measure and compare your museum’s key performance indicators (KPIs) A process to set-up and conduct peer museum comparisonsProcedures and examples of how to capture and report data used in your selected indicatorsPrinciples for using indicator data to inform museum management decisions

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442263314
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	03/15/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	180
File size:	17 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

John W. Jacobsen, president of White Oak Associates, Inc. and CEO of the White Oak Institute, was associate director of the Museum of Science in Boston. During that time, the Museum served 2.2 million visitors during a twelve-month period, an unsurpassed record.
John W. Jacobsen led museum analysis and planning for White Oak Associates, Inc. for over forty years and over a hundred museums through hundreds of commissions. Projects include eighteen museums representing over a billion dollars of actual and anticipated investment in new and expanding museums internationally. In the Eighties, he was associate director of the Museum of Science in Boston. In 1988, the Museum served 2.2 million visitors, an unsurpassed record. White Oak integrated operating economics with creative concepts in its plans. Mr. Jacobsen's BA and MFA are from Yale University. Long committed to the museum field, Jacobsen is the founder of the Museum Film Network ('85), the Planetarium Show Network ('88), the Ocean Film Network ('92), AAM's Professional Committee on Green Museums (PIC Green '08) and of the Digital Immersive Giant Screen Specifications (DIGSS 1.0 '11). With Ms. Jeanie Stahl, Mr. Jacobsen formed the White Oak Institute in 2007, a non-profit dedicated to research-based museum innovation, with completed awards and contracts with the NSF, the IMLS, the AAM and the ACM to develop field-wide standards and data collection fields. Mr. Jacobsen’s extensive writings and presentations on museum topics have appeared in Curator, Museum Management and Curatorship, Informal Learning Review and at AAM, ASTC, ACM and other conferences. He is the author of Measuring Museum Impact and Performance (2016) and editor and co-author of The Museum Manager’s Compendium (2017), both published by Rowman&Littlefield.

Table of Contents

List of Tables and Worksheets
Foreword by Ford W. Bell, DVM, President&CEO (retired) American Alliance of Museums
Acknowledgements
Introduction

Part 1: Theory: How and why do museums do what they do?
Chapter 1: Finding the Museum Theory of Action
Chapter 2: Identifying Potential Museum Impacts
Chapter 3: Measuring Impact
Part 2: Practice: How do you measure your museum’s impact and performance?
Chapter 4: Shift from Theory to Practice
Chapter 5: Prioritize your Museum’s Purposes and Impacts
Chapter 6: Determine your Museum’s Performance Metrics
Chapter 7: Compare your Museum to your Peers
Summary
Chapter 8: Report Changes in Your Impact and Performance
Chapter 9: Summary and Future Potentials

Appendixes
Appendix A: Definitions and Assumptions
Appendix B: Source Documents for MIIP 1.0
Appendix C: Potential Museum Impacts: Selected Examples
Appendix D: Measurement Formulas and Worksheet Templates
Appendix E: Worksheets: Blanks and Versions by the Sample Museum

Index
About the Author

Editorial Reviews

Veteran museum planner John Jacobsen has prepared a meticulous analysis of how museums organize, manage, and document their operations. . . .The book is a treasure house of information and strategies for understanding the nuances of what museums are, want to be, and sometimes wind up being. . . . The book finishes with a very useful presentation of the diverse and complex world of museums, a helpful listing of the sources of the 1,025 indicators, and then numerous pages of key performance formulas and worksheets that enable museums to organize, interpret, and compare their activities. . . .[I]t is an extremely useful volume that fully acknowledges both the diversity within the museum world and the need for institutions to fully locate themselves and present to their particular locale their social, economic and intellectual roles and successes.” —Informal Learning Review

““This book is a toolkit that can help museums move from the subjective to the objective in communicating the value that they bring to communities. … By helping museums measure the value of the work that they do, this groundbreaking book will enable them to effectively communicate their impact to key stakeholders, allowing museums to have the support that they need to serve their communities in new and creative ways, for the benefit of all.”” —Ford W. Bell, American Alliance of Museums (AAM) President, 2007-2015

From the Publisher

Veteran museum planner John Jacobsen has prepared a meticulous analysis of how museums organize, manage, and document their operations.. . .The book is a treasure house of information and strategies for understanding the nuances of what museums are, want to be, and sometimes wind up being.. .. The book finishes with a very useful presentation of the diverse and complex world of museums, a helpful listing of the sources of the 1,025 indicators, and then numerous pages of key performance formulas and worksheets that enable museums to organize, interpret, and compare their activities.. . .[I]t is an extremely useful volume that fully acknowledges both the diversity within the museum world and the need for institutions to fully locate themselves and present to their particular locale their social, economic and intellectual roles and successes.

Informal Learning Review

This book is a toolkit that can help museums move from the subjective to the objective in communicating the value that they bring to communities. … By helping museums measure the value of the work that they do, this groundbreaking book will enable them to effectively communicate their impact to key stakeholders, allowing museums to have the support that they need to serve their communities in new and creative ways, for the benefit of all.

Ford W. Bell