Digital Technologies and the Museum Experience: Handheld Guides and Other Media - Softcover

Loïc Tallon has worked as an independent researcher and as a project manager and new media consultant with Cultural Innovations, a leading international museum consultancy. Kevin Walker has worked in and with museums since 1996, including five years as senior software designer for exhibitions at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

This book makes an important and timely contribution to the field of museum studies. For museum practitioners, it provides a useful reference work on the application of digital interpretive technologies. Along with practical and technical information, there is much to stimulate thought about how such technologies encourage and empower the user. The book wisely ends on a cautionary note: to be successful in the longer term 'new museum media always need to harmonize with existing practice.' (Margaret Greeves, The Fitzwilliam Museum)

Well written, thought-provoking, and informative...an indispensable resource for museum professionals. Essential. (J. M. Youmans CHOICE, April 2009)

This volume highlights the exciting potential for handheld devices and digital technologies in museums and related settings. It provides a valuable, in-depth guide to an important set of research projects that have important implications for educators, exhibit designers, museum curators, and others. This book greatly expanded my horizons. I found it compelling and highly readable. (Hillary McLean Educational Technology, July-August 2009)

Rather than pushing technology for technology's sake, this book presents an intelligent and well-considered discussion of the ways technology can transform the museum experience. Editors Tallon and Walker have created a much needed overview of important research and writing from an internationally-acclaimed group of scholars, museum professionals, and learning specialists. This compendium provides a framework for understanding how digital technologies - from audioguides to multi-media tours and web-based applications – can enhance and expand the impact of a museum visit. An indispensable resource for both the museum professional and student. (Kathryn Potts, Whitney Museum of American Arts)

It explores in a most enlightening way how mobile devices and digital technology as such may be used to enhance and transform the visitor's experience of the museum. (Mediekultur: Journal Of Media and Communication Research)