Conference Presenter: Jesse Gagnon

Hi! My name is Jesse Gagnon and I’m currently a graduate student at the University of Delaware earning my master’s degree in history and my museum studies certificate. This past summer I was very lucky to intern at the New Castle Historical Society designing an audio walking tour. And I’m really looking forward to presenting with Mike Connolly, the executive director of the New Castle Historical Society, this year at SMA.

At the Historical Society, we often get visitors stopping by on days that our museum is closed or our buildings are full of school children. In the past we’ve had to turn many of them away since we didn’t have the resources or space to accommodate them. Now, with an audio walking tour, we can provide tours of our historic district for visitors year-round without having to schedule and pay extra tour guides. We wrote, recorded and produced the tour in-house, and saved lots of money in the process. And since we rent the tour, it’s a new revenue stream for the organization!

If you’d like to utilize technology to help with your interpretation and minimize personnel costs, but are intimidated by the equipment and software or just don’t know how or where to start, then our presentation, Turn It Up! Self-Produced Audio Tours For Your Museum, is for you!

Using inexpensive and readily available equipment and software you can produce CD-quality audio recordings, like this one, for next to nothing. We’ll help you choose recording software and equipment that will fit any budget. We’ll discuss how you can use audio immediately in the interpretation of your museum or historic site, and how the basic audio recordings you make now can be used to develop smart phone apps and other interpretive tools later. We’ll also provide an opportunity for you to try a test recording so you can see just how easy it is!

Give some thought to how an audio tour might help you better interpret your museum while stretching those precious dollars a little further! Then join us on Monday morning, February 20, at the SMA Conference in Ocean City.

See you then!