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Challenges of Operating a Working Fossil Laboratory in a Natural History Museum
For more than half of visitors, the Academy of Natural Science's Fossil Prep Lab provided visitors with satisfying opportunities to see "real" fossils, gain information or knowledge, have a chance to talk to experts, and enrich their understanding. Yet, the educational opportunities afforded to visitors at fossil labs present challenges to museum staff responsible for managing, working in, or planning the lab. The three primary challenges to a fossil lab's successful operation that I discovered in my research are: 1) concept and design planning, 2) staffing, and 3) evaluating the visitor experience. Addressing these challenges will contribute to their successful operation.
During concept and design development phases, devise an interpretive framework for the lab without competing exhibit messages and plan the lab's design to support these messages.
All the museum professionals interviewed who either developed the labs' concepts or who worked in the lab voiced their commitment to showing their visitors the human element in the process of fossil preparation. Many indicated their labs are also committed to answering visitors' questions. These goals may, however, place conflicting demands on preparators' time. Preparators often are overwhelmed by the number of visitors asking questions at the same time or are required to meet deadlines imposed by exhibits or curatorial staff and therefore don't have time to talk to visitors. For instance, when the Page Museum's lab opened, preparators had intended to talk with visitors through an intercom system but discovered that answering visitors' questions disrupted their ability to concentrate on fossil preparation. According to the Page Museum's Collections Manager Christopher Shaw,
When we first opened, in the first year we had over two million people, I believe. It was wall-to-wall people in the first week... Our staff members were spending their whole time answering the same questions, like what are you doing, where do I find a sabertooth tiger, are you building skeletons in there?... You get halfway through the explanation and look up and they would be walking off to look at something else. It was really irritating so we disconnected that [the intercom system].[8]
While in the concept development phase, at least one natural history museum, the Field Museum, recognized the demands placed on preparators' time while working in the lab; as a result, they planned not to have preparators talk to visitors and instead to have docents, on occasion, positioned outside the lab to answer visitors’ questions. The Field's McDonald's Prep Lab was, at least originally, developed and designed to prepare Sue for exhibition. The lab's development team realized talking with visitors would have competed with the time required to quickly prepare Sue for exhibition. The Field's Collections Manager Bill Simpson explained, "it was an incredibly tight schedule and... to do the job right, we had to really focus on using all of our preparation time effectively."[9]
As at the Field's McDonald's Prep Lab, staff and volunteers working in the Dallas Museum of Natural History's Paleontology Lab generally do not talk to visitors. As Preparator Ron Tykoski explained, "If staff interacted with visitors, productivity would be cut in half."
Other labs accept that fossil preparation work takes longer if preparators talk to visitors and thus have devised strategies to address imposing deadlines. According to North Carolina Museum of Natural Science's Curator of Paleontology Vince Schneider, staff and volunteers working in the Fossil Lab initiate interactions with visitors. Staff shares with visitors the name of the fossil they are working on, the appearance of the animal from which the fossil came, the fossil's age, and the reasons they study fossils. Schneider acknowledges that under these conditions, staff and volunteers generally don't prepare a lot of fossils.[10] One solution proposed by the Academy of Natural Science's Paleo Lab Coordinator Jason Poole is to recruit more preparators to explain what other preparators are working on.
The other challenge to planning for working fossil labs is effective collaboration between exhibit developers and preparators during the design of the lab's interface. Design of the interface between the lab's interior and exterior is important, as it is the location where the educational exchange between staff and visitors occurs. However, my research showed that the lab's design became a "division of labor between preparation and collections management staff on the inside, and exhibits on the outside."[11] As Preparator Bryan Small at Denver Museum of Nature and Science recalled, "We had the lab up to the window and then Exhibits were responsible for talking with us on the other side of the window. There is a sloper [interpretive panel] with the tools we use, what is the fossil lab, why it is here. Exhibits developed this concept on the other side of the glass." Frances Kruger, Exhibit Developer and Interpretive Writer, was responsible for writing labels that tied the lab concepts to the overall exhibition.[12] A similar division of labor occurred at the Museum of the Earth. Director Warren Allmon said, "Our collections manager designed the details of the vents, lights, 'the inside of the box.' Our exhibit staff, at the time, worked out some of the details 'outside of the box,' such as the case out in front of the prep lab... There was not a lot of discussion during the design process... The exhibit people should have been more involved in designing the interior of the space."[13] Allmon added:
I guess what I've learned mostly out of this...is, it really isn't trivial how to design a lab. It isn't just park a dinosaur bone on a table. You need to think more about the whole human architecture...[14]
Secure staff responsible for working in the lab during regular museum hours, for coordinating lab personnel and preparation activities, and for training volunteers in preparation activities, and if appropriate, in interacting with visitors.
The second challenge of operating working fossil labs as public exhibitions is staffing-having sufficient staff to work in the lab during regular museum hours, to coordinate lab personnel and preparation activities, and to train volunteers. Having sufficient staff to keep the lab open during regular museum hours has been a problem for several labs, including the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian and the Museum of the Earth. Only a few labs - for example, at the Field Museum, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and the Academy of Natural Sciences-have staff or volunteers present in the lab during regular museum hours. Even these labs, which have a commitment to providing staff whenever the museum is open, sometimes find it challenging to staff the lab, especially if a preparator calls in sick or is on vacation. For this reason, having staff to coordinate lab personnel as well as preparation activities is crucial. Several natural history museums do not have even one employee whose full time responsibility is to perform these duties because their museums simply do not have the financial resources to support this position. This has proven to be challenging for the National Museum of Natural History, which for years has attempted, but has not succeeded, in securing funds to pay a FossiLab Coordinator's salary. Particularly at labs without a lab coordinator, collaborations between collections management staff running the operations inside the lab and volunteer coordinators managing retention and recruitment of volunteers, is critical. At the Museum of the Earth, Allmon learned that staffing should be a serious consideration in planning a working fossil lab. To this end, he admitted,
We have had mixed success with our volunteer program since we have opened the museum [in 2003]. Overall, it is remarkably successful. But the museum added a whole new level to our volunteer needs...the collections staff and the volunteer coordinator have to be coordinating, talking all the time. We knew it was a problem. I just laid down the law and said, "We are going to staff it every single Saturday." [Even if it meant staffing the lab himself].[15]
Another challenging aspect of staffing the lab is having volunteers who are comfortable talking to visitors or who have sufficient training to answer the range of visitors' questions. Volunteers are drawn to working in fossil laboratories for different reasons. As Allmon put it,
What we learned is that there are two kinds of people who like to work in the prep lab, those who want to work in the lab because they don't want to talk and then others. We have people sit in the lab with the window closed and that is okay, I guess. And [we have] people who don't prep anything, who spend all of Saturday talking to people. Because it is all run by volunteers, we have to live with this. We would prefer to have people who are prepping and talking...
One solution is to leverage volunteers' strengths, catering the lab's projects to their interests. Preparator Bryan Small at Denver explained,
We encourage volunteers to work at the window. But we don't force them. Some volunteers don't want to talk to anybody; they just want to work on their fossil. You don't want them up front. Others have the gift of gab. They thrive on being up there and talking to the public...we try to give them projects that are fun to talk about.[16]
Another solution is to pair up volunteers who enjoy talking with those who enjoy prepping fossils.
An additional concern with using volunteers is that those who have minimal paleontological training might offer inaccurate or incomplete answers to visitors' questions. Volunteers do not always know the answers to visitors' myriad questions. Often volunteers only know the details of the fossil they are working on. Museum Specialist at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Steve Jabo instructs volunteers to tell visitors when they don't know rather than to guess the answers to visitors' questions. Should lab volunteers at the Academy of Natural Sciences not know the answer to a visitors' question, they are instructed to consult the Paleo Lab Coordinator. As articulated in the Academy's Laboratory Manual, Jason Poole recommends to his staff, "It is okay if you do not know the answer to a question. Don't make it up; ask for help and stick around to hear the answer. It is also okay to look things up for people, or to tell them where they can get the answers for themselves."[17]
Conduct additional evaluations of the impact of working fossil laboratories on visitors' experience
The third challenge to operating working fossil laboratories is evaluation. Though there is a growing interest in evaluation studies of working labs, several museums are just beginning to improve their labs through evaluation. Results of my visitor study conducted at the Academy of Natural Science's Fossil Prep Lab demonstrated that the interpersonal interaction provided at some fossil labs significantly impacts how visitors rate their experience. In order to improve this interaction, the next step is to evaluate the quality of the interaction between staff, volunteers, and visitors. For instance, the Museum of the Earth has learned they should have done more formative evaluation before they built their fossil lab, and consequently would like to undertake some remedial work, particularly of the human interaction they offer.
Staff working in fossil labs should participate in determining criteria by which to be evaluated. Then these criteria should be evaluated with visitors to identify whether they, in fact, contribute to quality interpretation. Evaluator Chris Parsons developed a list of skills for "good guides" engaged in quality unscripted interpretation for the docent program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. This guide could be adapted to fossil laboratory exhibitions at natural history museums.
Conclusion
Literally manifestations of the philosophical merger of the museum's research and educational functions, working fossil laboratories connect museum research to visitors' natural interests in the preparation of specimens and to scientists' lives. Not only do fossil laboratories connect visitors to scientists' narratives, they connect them to the scientists, as themselves. As American Museum of Natural History's Gilbert Stucker wrote about the quarry at Dinosaur National Monument in 1965, giving visitors the chance to become involved, to engage with scientists, is the answer to effective interpretation. "He [the visitor] becomes involved. He enters the paleontological experience and shares in the discovery and the excavating [and in the case of the fossil lab, I would add, in the act of preparation]...It is not coming to him second hand, as something told, something shown; he is living it."[18]