Station Eleven - Museum Project: Part 1
Research Paper

there's research, and then there's research

As I mentioned on the main Museum Project page, part the overall Projecet involved you familiarizing yourself with museums--how they work, how they are organized, how the set up exhibits and provide information and even make money. For those who will be presenting the final project in a Web-based format, I also encouraged you to look at a couple of actual museum Web sites to see what sorts of things they include on them.

You will also need to do some research on "things" in your museum's general collection. For example, if you are going to create a museum on nail polish, you'll need to do some research on nail polish (why would you? what is your point/purpose/mission statement?): who invented it? Where? Are there any unusual stories or rituals or taboos about nail polish? Are there any examples or pictures of ancient nail polishes? How did nail polish change over the years? What is different about today's nail polish? And so forth. At this point you will also be gathering pictures of "things" that will be in various exhibit rooms.

However, that research is just to help you with the final project (coming up); it is not what you are doing specifically for your research paper.

so what's the research paper about?

The research paper will be due prior to the Final Project (due date is on the Class Schedule). It is absolutely required and is worth up to 100 points.

If you did not read the lecture on How (and Why) to do a Research Paper very carefully, please do so now.

ok? done?

Reminder: if you did not yet 1: Visit a Museum (and send me proof--a selfie e-mailed to me is the quickest way to do that), or if you did not yet 2: Get your Museum Project Proposal APPROVED, then you need to do that now. I will not read or grade your Research Paper until both of those have been checked off. And late papers are penalized 10%.

ok? is that done too?
whew!

The general research for how to orgainze your museum, what will be in the various collesctions is far too general, and writing about everything in your paper 1) would make the research paper unfocused/choppy (and probably pointless), and 2) would make the research paper a hundred page assignment. You do not want to have to write a book.

Instead, you are going to focus on just one special exhibit that will appear in one room of your museum. It needs to relate to the overall collection, but it should be specilized, very interesting or contraversial or surprising or profound (something you can write a thesis about). Let's go back to that nail polis museum. If, during your research, you find a specialized article on actress Tippi Hedren's role in flooding the nail salon industry with Vietnamese women, something like that might make a very interesting special exhibit in your museum. How did this actress take on a special cause to insure refugees had work, had a marketable skill? Why did she do it? You'll find lots of articles and even pictures once you start looking. Of course one of your sources must be a book, and I doubt there's a whole book on this focused topic; however, there are several books about Tippi Hedren (including an autobiography, and she is featured in several other books (just go to Amazon and type in "Tippi Hedren book" and see what comes up :)

Here are a couple of other examples of topics that have worked in the past for other students:

• For a museum of McDonalds's Happy Meals, a student had a special room devoted to how Disney's participation in Happy Meals; the research paper focused on how and why this successful arrangement lasted awhile but fairly abruptly stopped for some contraversial reasons. (So this paper looked at an issue related to the subject).

• A student creating a museum of the Game of Life (yes, the board game), did a research paper on a just how a handful of much-earlier games influenced the design of The Game of Life. (So this paper looked at the historical background and relation to other examples of the subject, and those games were exhibited, with this information, in one room of the museum).

• Another student did a Beanie Babies Museum, and the paper charted the economic rise and fall of Beanie Babies as a fad and financial trend. (So this looked at the economic and social rise and fall of the subject). There were other specific rooms for McDonalds's Teenie Beanie Giveaways, sports collectible Beanie Babies, the bears, and even a room showing variants of the same Beanies, but one room featured the information in the paper along with a Beanie timeline showing key spikes and valleys in the rise and fall of the fad.

Fortunately, you should already have selected a narrow focus for your research paper, based on a special exhibit, when you turned in your Proposal, and as long as it was APPROVED, it should work fine :)

The paper must be in current (8th edition) MLA format and will be about four-to-eight pages (with an additional page being the Works Cited page).

• Papers that are less than four FULL pages will not be accepted

• papers that are less than five FULL pages are trying for a "C"

• five FULL pages or more are required for your paper to be considered for a higher grade

You should have at least three sources, but you will probably have more, and, again, at least one source must be a book.

You are required to have direct quotations from all of those sources, and those direct quotations must be followed by parenthetical citations. Overall, about 1/3 of your paper should be documented quotations from the sources.

All of these Museum Project Research Papers should have pictures; after all, museums are filled with "things"; they are usually visual. Do include pictures if possible, but remember that pictures do not count as pages of text.

You will e-mail the Research Paper as an attached Word (.doc, .docx, .pdf or .rtf) file.

you are not alone

There are some samples in the Files section of Canvas.

an (important) afterthought:

Once you turn this in and get it graded, you will not be done with it. The final project will be the presentation of the overall museum. This research paper will be included IN that project; it will be a special exhibit in the overall museum. So, if you are doing that final project as a website (most do), then one of the Nav Tabs on the site will be "Special Exhibit," and the entire contents of the Research Paper (text, pictures, Works Cited) will show up on a separate section of the site.

If, instead, you choose to do a museum catalog (which is not the same as a short brochure), this special exhibit (research paper) will be a section in the catalogue (copied word-for-word, with pictures, with Works Cited page). The good news is that that means you will already have several pages of the final project done.