The recent perspective known as meaning-making has advanced the belief that understanding interpretive site visitors’ frameworks and past experiences is critical to successful interpretation. How, then, do visitors make meaning of heritage site experiences and of the past in general? This review examines and synthesizes recent studies and considers their contribution to the theory and practice of historical interpretation. In sum, research suggests three major realms of experience from which visitors draw schemata that inform meaning–making at heritage sites: (a) associations with and knowledge of history, (b) experiences and behavior regarding the past in everyday life, and (c) expectations of and behavior at heritage sites. Using this literature as groundwork, three strategies for empirically driven historical interpretation are presented: (a) addressing the nature of history and visitors’ associations, (b) incorporating everyday life behaviors, and (c) interpreting for the social nature of the heritage site visit.
BeckerC. L. (1932). Everyman his own historian.American Historical Review, 37 (2), 221–225.
2.
BirneyR. (1982). An evaluation of visitors’ experience at the governor's palace, Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia.Academic Psychology Bulletin, 4, 135–141.
3.
CarsonB., & CarsonC. (1983). Things unspoken: Learning social history from artifacts. In GardnerJ., & AdamsG. (Eds.), Ordinary people and everyday life (pp. 181–203). Nashville, TN: American Association for State and Local History.
4.
CsikszentmihalyiM., & Rochberg–HaltonE. (1981). The meaning of things: Domestic symbols and the selfCambridge: Cambridge University Press.
5.
DervinB. (1981). Mass communicating: Changing conceptions of the audience. In RiceR., & PaisleyW. (Eds.), Public communication campaigns (pp. 71–87). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
6.
DraperL. (1984). Friendship and the museum experience: The interrelationship of social ties and learning. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of CaliforniaBerkeley.
7.
FalkJ., & DierkingL. (1992). The museum experience.Washington, DC: Whalesback Books.
8.
FrischM. (1989). American history and the structures of collective memory: A modest exercise in empirical iconography.Journal of American History, 75 (4), 1130–1155.
9.
GlassieH. (1982). Passing the time in Ballymenone: Culture and history of an Ulster community.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
10.
GordonB. (1986). The souvenir: Messenger of the extraordinary.Journal of Popular Culture, 20 (3), 135–146.
11.
HilkeD. (1989). The family as a learning system: An observational study of families in museums. In ButlerB., & SussmanM. (Eds.), Museum visits and activities for family life enrichment (pp. 101–129). New York: The Haworth Press.
12.
KatrielT., & FarrellT. (1991). Scrapbooks as cultural texts: An American art of memory.Text and Performance Quarterly, 11 (1), 1–17.
13.
KnudsonD., CableT., & BeckL. (1995). Interpretation of cultural and natural resources.State College, PA: Venture Publishing, Inc.
14.
Lo GerfoM. (1984). Three ways of reminiscence in theory and practice. In DunawayD., & BaumW. (Eds.), Oral history: An interdisciplinary anthology (pp. 314–323). Nashville, TN: American Association for State and Local History.
15.
MuselloC. (1986). Family houses and social identity: Communicational perspectives on the homes of Ridge County Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia.
16.
Parks Canada. (No date). Parks Canada policyOttawa: Parks Canada.
17.
People, Places and Design Research. (1990). Audience research for the Minnesota History Center.Northampton, MA.
18.
ScarpinoP. (1988). Academic historians and museum professionals: Bringing the past to the present. Paper presented at the meeting of the Association of Living History Farms and Museums.
SharpeE. (1982). The senior series program: A case study with implications for adoption.Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
21.
SilvermanL. (1988). Toward “the hall of history”: A survey of visitors’ backgrounds, interests, and opinions regarding current and future exhibits.Harrisburg, PA: State Museum of Pennsylvania.
22.
SilvermanL. (1990). Of us and other “things”: The content and functions of talk by adult visitor pairs in an art and a history museum. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia.
23.
SilvermanL. (1992). The pilot study report: People and the past.Mosaic, 1 (2-3), 2–5, 12.
24.
SilvermanL. (1993). Toward the dialogic exhibit: Interactive evaluation training at the Chinatown history museum.New York: Chinatown History Museum.
25.
SilvermanL. (1996). Past-related leisure in the lives of American adults. Paper presented at the Leisure Research Symposium, National Recreation & Park Association Congress, Kansas City, MO.
26.
SilvermanL., & KornR. (1994). Enemies to allies: Using front-end evaluation to inform interpretive planning in an historical exhibition.Current Trends in Audience Research and Evaluation.Washington, DC: American Association of Museums.
27.
SmithM. (1982). Persuasion and human action: A review and critique of social influence theories.Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing.
28.
TildenF. (1957). Interpreting our heritage.Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
29.
UnruhD. (1983). Death and personal history: Strategies of identity preservation.Social Problems, 30 (3), 340–351.
