Hearthside - The House That Love Built

VISITOR STUDY BEING CONDUCTED AT HEARTHSIDE

For the last several decades, scholars passionately devoted to historic house museums have lamented the declining attendance, absence of innovation, and general lack of interest in historic house museums," states Melissa Higgins who is working on her thesis on Historic House Museum Visitor Studies, using Hearthside as part of her research. Her thought is that with thoughtful and active use of visitor studies and getting feedback directly from their stakeholders, historic house museums would be provided with the information needed to make sensible and effective decisions, allowing them to increase relevance in sustainable, meaningful ways.

As a candidate for a Masters degree in Museum Studies from the Harvard Extension School, Melissa first became acquainted with Hearthside as part of the intern team involved through Preserve Rhode Island's Business Plan project conducted two years ago. She has selected three sites for her project: Hearthside, the Eleazer Arnold House of Lincoln, and the Lippitt House in Providence.

Since November, Melissa has attended several house tours and special events to capture visitor impressions. She has also mailed out a survey to Lincoln residents to get a sense of their familiarity with some of the town's historic sites. An article appeared in The Valley Breeze Dec. 23rd edition which featured her project along with the opportunity for readers to take an online survey. The last step will be conducting focus groups. The results and impacts will be shared with each of the sites to help with future planning.

Melissa states that, "Visitor studies conducted for this thesis will be documented from start to finish, in order to be used as models for other similar organizations. Through these examples, a tool-kit of visitor studies survey instruments tailored to historic house museums will be created, which will prove valuable to the entire field of historic house museums."

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