Best Practices in Exhibit Design

Too often the lessons learned designing and developing public exhibitions are not shared with other designers. ExhibitFiles is a place where exhibit developers and other museum professional can share their work and review exhibits created by their colleagues. Over the last two years, dozens of museum professionals have authored more than 200 case studies and reviews of exhibits and exhibitions.

Along with the ability to post, browse, search, and tag reviews and case studies, ExhibitFiles contains profiles of 1,600 exhibit developers and designers worldwide. Member profiles contain personal and professional information along with favorites, contacts, and links to blog feeds and Flickr photo feeds. At the onset of the project, a blog was launched and the design process for the site was shared with the community. This open process, along with an active advisory board, helped shape the early development of the site.

The ExhibitFiles project receive funding from the National Science Foundation. Ideum developed the site and a custom content management system (CMS) using Ruby on Rails. Ideum, along with the Association of Science-Technology Centers and Independent Exhibitions, helps maintain the site. A new round of development in 2010 expanded the personal profiles function adding support for Twitter and LinkedIn.

Exhibit Files is now operated by the Association of Science-Technology Centers.

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