accessibility priorities. The council considered information 

 from the units' five-year plans on accessibility improvement 

 (submitted to the Provost in September 1996, with annual 

 reports thereafter to the Program) and the Program's extensive 

 work with the Office of Physical Plant on facilities accessibility. 

 A report on the council's recommendations was submitted to 

 the Provost in July. 



The Program receives guidance from and disseminates in- 

 formation to staff and the public through a joint advisory 

 council. The advisor)' council is composed of members who 

 are staff accessibility liaisons appointed by their unit and 

 people with disabilities from the community that volunteer 

 their time and expertise. A number of meetings were held 

 with the joint advisory council during the year on topics in- 

 cluding the formation of the oversight council, the progress 

 in unit five-year Accessibility Plan submission, and the search 

 for ways to integrate access into all facets of the Institution's 

 operation. 



In conjunction with its policy and implementation 

 guidelines writing responsibility, the Program conducted four 

 seminars with Smithsonian staff and outside advisors with dis- 

 abilities to create guidelines for accessible program and media 

 design. Program staff then presented this and other accessibility 

 information to Smithsonian and outside museum professional 

 in numerous technical assistance training sessions. 



The Programs' exhibition guidelines — developed with 

 Smithsonian exhibition departments — are the first of their kind 

 in the United States. Following distribution to Smithsonian staff, 

 without any advertisement, the Program received more than 200 

 requests from around the world for copies of the Smithsonian 

 Guidelines for Accessible Exhibition Design. 



A significant amount of Program time is spent on acces- 

 sibility reviews of facilities and exhibition to ensure that all 

 new construction is fully accessible to people with disabilities. 

 A close working relationship has been fostered through these 

 reviews with the Office of Physical Plants and museum exhibi- 

 tion designers, thus increasing staff awareness of what acces- 

 sible design entails and helping the Institution further its 

 goals to become fully accessible to all visitors and staff. 



Support for Smithsonian units also included providing 

 direct accessibility services for visitors (e.g., sign language inter- 

 preters, Real-time captioning, and translating documents into 

 braille.) This year the Program arranged nearly 500 hours of 

 services for visitors attending Smithsonian Associates courses, 

 FONZ lectures, and docent-led tours of the museums. 



Institutional Studies Office 



Zahava D. Doering, Director 



The Institutional Studies Office (ISO) is a pan-Institutional 

 resource for the scientific study of the characteristics, atti- 

 tudes, opinions and experiences of Smithsonian constituen- 

 cies. The small staff includes professionals with expertise in 



sociology, demography, research methods, survey statistics, 

 and a variety of quantitative and qualitative data analysis and 

 evaluation techniques. 



Since its founding in 1987, ISO has conducted studies and 

 applied research for Smithsonian administrators, curators and 

 programmatic staff. Areas of investigation include audience 

 and membership profiles, background studies and assessments 

 of SI exhibitions and public programs, and ongoing analyses 

 of employee composition. For each study, ISO is responsible 

 for all aspects of study or survey design, implementation of 

 data collection, analysis and report writing. Institutional 

 clients are asked to assume the costs of data collection and 

 data entry. In addition, the office provides some technical 

 consultation to cultural organizations throughout the country 

 and professional review of applied research conducted for 

 them. The staff is also available, on a limited basis, to conduct 

 seminars in various aspects of applied quantitative and qualita- 

 tive research and program evaluation. 



The results of ISO studies are disseminated in several formats. 

 The major vehicle is a Report series; analyses include techni- 

 cal appendices which both document the work and can be 

 used as methodological models. The Reports are distributed 

 both within and outside of SI. Publications also include 

 Research Notes. Research Notes have a more limited distri- 

 bution, either because of the subject matter or because the 

 results are not generalizable. Results are also presented at 

 professional meetings or in journal publications. Finally, to 

 ensure that clients have timely access to results while more 

 formal documents are being prepared, memoranda are 

 prepared for internal use. 



The Office's 1996—97 activities included: 



(1) Background studies, e.g., the Material Culture study — a 

 background study designed to help in the preparation of a 

 new on-line exhibition. Smithsonian visitors in the National 

 Museum of American History were surveyed regarding their 

 use of computers and the internet and their interests with 

 respect to the subject of material culture. The results will 

 inform a new, interactive Smithsonian web-site that is now 

 under development. 



(2) Formative evaluation, e.g., audience research and com- 

 ponent testing for the new African Voices exhibition in the 

 National Museum of Natural History. ISO staff trained and 

 assisted the exhibition planning team in informal assessment 

 of visitor responses to themes, texts, images and design com- 

 ponents proposed for the exhibition. 



(3) Assessments of major exhibitions and programs, includ- 

 ing the following: (a) a new permanent exhibition, Think 

 Tank at the National Zoo; (b) an exhibition scheduled for 

 renovation, Information Age at the National Museum of 

 American History; (c) a temporary exhibition, Visual Journal, 

 at the Center for African American History and Culture; (d) a 

 temporary exhibition, Richard Lindner: Paintings and Water- 

 colors 1948-1977 at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Gar- 

 den; (e) a loan exhibition, Amber at the National Museum of 

 Natural History; and (f) Art Night on the Mall, a summer pro- 



