Musings on Museum Studies Research Methods and Close Reading

Before starting this class, I had a vague recollection of what close reading was.  I say a ‘vague recollection,’ because I’m fairly certain we covered close reading in a class in high school-- and then I never thought about it again.  This is because, at the time, it seemed like a colossal waste of time.  I’ll admit that sometimes it still does, especially when I know that I’m looking at a source solely to glean a single, specific fact or piece of evidence to support my argument or idea.  However, in light of the work we have been doing on close reading over the past few weeks, I can see its value in some situations.  For example, I frequently use academic search engines such as ProQuest to locate articles and texts to use for papers and projects.  However, as we all know, while search engines can be wonderful tools that save us time we would otherwise spend searching through every publication known to man for one article that suits our needs, there’s still a necessary element of human evaluation that is required after they return our search results.  Keyword searching, even with the use of parenthesis and modifiers (e.g. AND/OR), is an imperfect science.  For instance, for my thesis research I have tried every combination and permutation of “science museum/centre” and “history exhibit” that I can think of.  And of course, these searches have turned up hundreds of well-written scholarly articles that happen to feature those phrases… and have absolutely no relevance to my topic.  Some of these articles even have titles that appear to be relevant, like Alan Friedman’s October 2010 Physics Today article entitled “The Evolution of the Science Museum,” which, unfortunately for me and my work, covers more of a shift in visitor groups than in the types of content displayed.  I wouldn’t have known this, however, unless I performed a close reading of the article and determined that Friedman’s research question was something akin to “who were-- and are-- science museums for?” rather than, “how did the content displayed my science museums shift?” as I had hoped.1  In this way, close reading has helped me to weed out the works that are not appropriate (leaving me with disappointingly little to work with at the moment), which ultimately saves me the time and eventual headache when I realize that what I thought was an appropriate source actually isn’t.

Aside from those revelations about close reading, what has struck me the most about researching for museum studies is that it differs little from researching any other topic with regards to the wide range of methods that are used.  To write one article, an author might conduct a survey, read previous academic literature on the topic, pull from primary sources like newspapers, magazines, interviews or diaries, or even use simple websites.  However, despite the wealth of information provided by this variety of research methods, it is important to remember that not all sources are created equal.  For example, it is perfectly acceptable to conduct a survey to gain insight or data.  However, you have to go about doing so in a way that minimizes bias and maximizes diversity within your chosen sample.  As was discussed in class, this was not the case with Emily Fekete’s Facebook survey on the Garbage Plate, which she later used as significant evidence in her article, “‘I Know I’m Home When I Have One:’ The Cultural Significance of the Garbage Plate of Rochester, NY.”  Fekete never specified if this survey was conducted publically, or simply amongst her Facebook friends.  If it was the later, then it is safe to assume the existence of bias and a lack of diversity amongst the friend group of Rochester native Fekete.  In addition to this, a close reading and examination of her sources reveals the use of a number of private or commercial websites, which can be easily influenced or manipulated by their owners.  This makes them unreliable sources and anything published on them should be taken with a grain of salt, something which Fekete does not appear to do.2  In short, while variety in sources and research methods is good, sources cited within sources should be checked for accuracy and reliability, something which close reading can aid in.

1Alan Friedman. "The Evolution of the Science Museum." Physics Today 63, no. 10 (October 2010): 45.

2Emily Fekete.  “‘I Know I’m Home When I Have One:’ The Cultural Significance of the Garbage Plate of Rochester, NY,” Material Culture, Vol 46, No. 1, pp. 25-43 (2014)