Online vs In-Person visits

Today libraries and museums evoke a great deal of public trust. They rank higher than other information sources including government, commercial, and private websites, with libraries just barely outranking museums for the title of ultimate trustworthiness. There is some concern that the pervasiveness of the internet as a source of information will lead to the demise of museums in their physical form in exchange for their virtual counterparts. Studies suggest, however, that this public trust readily migrates to an online environment (Johnson). In fact, there are data that suggest the internet is not replacing in-person visits and may actually increase them. A 2006 survey found that about 23% of adults who have only visited museums in-person and not online said they have visited more often in the past year than previously. A slightly higher percentage (29%) said they visited both in-person and online and that they too visited more often in the past year. Internet users have been shown to visit museums in-person 2.6 times more often than non-internet users. The data also revealed that a majority of adults continue to visit museums in-person and a slightly smaller percentage visit both in-person and online. Only a very small percentage (5.1%) said they visited exclusively online (Griffiths 12, 14).