Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Mary Catherine E. Kingery-Page / The primary reasons for the existence of contemporary zoological parks are presented as conservation and conservation education. But in reality, human entertainment is the primary function of traditional zoos. There is a moral dilemma behind the practice of removing wild animals from their native habitats and holding them captive, primarily for the purpose of human entertainment and education. Exhibits designed with these human desires in mind never completely meet the needs of the animal. An exhibit designed with conservation in mind can fully address animal needs. The moral dilemma of keeping wild animals captive can be reconciled if the purpose of conservation shifts to the forefront of exhibit design. The term conservation, in this setting, refers to a habitat where a healthy, captive population can be sustained. Conservation means acquiring an in-depth understanding of an animal species and combining it with thoughtful, insightful design that responds to the species’ needs first. Secondary design considerations include facilitating the work of the animal keeper and visitor education and recreation. The keeper plays an important role in the health and well-being of the animal; a functional workplace is essential to the keeper’s job. The visitor plays an essential role in maintaining the funding that supports the zoo. In order for zoos to maintain adequate funding, they need visitors. To make this experience mutually worthwhile, exhibit design must create an experience that visitors want to be a part of, and the exhibit should impart an educational message to these visitors. This conservation-minded approach results in an exhibit that will serve primarily as a conservation facility. The exhibit is better suited to the animal by encouraging natural behavior and more accurately recreating natural habitat. A conservation exhibit can also fulfill the secondary purpose of human education by providing the visitor with a much richer depiction of the animal in its natural state, as well as showing visitors the need for species conservation.

Exhibit marketing can be a remarkably useful promotional practice that generates new applications and can adjust to different situations in the fierce marketplace. However, academics show little interest in this concept as well as its connection to former schools of thought. Accordingly, the purpose of this literature review is to evaluate and integrate the findings of multiple qualitative research studies to provide an overview of the concept of exhibit marketing. This study will provide a content analysis through a meta-synthesis with the citation index as a foundation. Extracted perspectives from different scholars are carefully analysed and summarized using the proposed theoretical framework. Findings revealed that the concept of exhibit marketing has close relation to the Nordic School of Thought.

Visitors use and understanding of interactive exhibits and their learning of scientific concepts was investigated by three studies. The first study categorised visitors' use of a sound exhibit and found that 49% successfully used the exhibit. Understanding was described with a knowledge hierarchy and learning was measured using a pre-test and post-test. Findings indicated that many visitors had prior knowledge of the relevant concepts and 50% of visitors learnt a concept from the exhibit. The second study investigated young children's understanding and interaction with the Mitey Quarry, a cooperative exhibit of four elements, conveyor, elevator, auger and sorter, which were used to move balls around the exhibit. Findings indicated that children's activities and their level of understanding varied for each element, though higher levels were achieved with elements that were easily observable. The children's activities began with observation, and then vacillated between manipulation, operation and control of an element. The third study identified the educational objectives of a physical fitness exhibit, Let's Get Physical, and their achievement by high school students. Findings indicated that the instructional sequence integrated cognitive and affective objectives, and although 42% of students stated their intentions to begin new exercise activities in response to the exhibit message "to be active everyday", after two weeks, these intentions had not been enacted. The research has contributed to improved exhibit design by demonstrating the value of knowledge, activity and affective hierarchies in identifying exhibit objectives and providing a means for evaluation. Hierarchies are an effective way to describe and measure the visitors' use and understanding of interactive exhibits and learning from them.

This thesis studies the use of exhibitions by public authorities and the possibilities of making exhibits out of authority topics.

This dissertation proposes an initial framework for designing and presenting exhibits in science centers and to recommend methods for improving the educational role of planetariums in science centers.

The goal of this project was to create a mobile structure in which a suite of paintings could be transported and viewed. When the structure and paintings are arranged as an "installation," they will create a more active role for a "viewer" who could then be defined as a "participant." The participant would be involved in the assembly of the environment and would find more opportunities for interaction in the assembled environment than he or she would in a traditional gallery or museum setting. A description and explanation of the processes involved in the creation of this project is preceded by a discussion of different historical, cultural, and methodological ways by which artwork is or has been presented. Also referenced are different artists and philosophies that informed this project. / Department of Art

Humans maintain wild animals in zoological parks for the purposes of education,conservation, research, and recreation. However, abnormal behaviors may develop in animals housed in human-made environments, if those environments do not allow them to carry out their natural behaviors (such as swimming, climbing, stalking, and predation). Captive environments in zoological parks often do not provide for natural behaviors due to spatial constraints and negative public reaction. Tigers (Panthera tigris) present a difficult case; they have large home ranges in the wild and natural predatory hunting behaviors that are difficult to provide for in captivity. As the numbers of wild tigers decline, captive breeding programs have become a major focus of the zoo community, which magnifies the importance of research on tiger husbandry. A body of research exists on small felids, but little, if any, has focused on tigers. This thesis presents an analysis of the effects of the captive environment on the behaviors of 18 captive Bengal and Siberian tigers in four zoological parks in Virginia and Pennsylvania. Certain animal characteristics (such as subspecies, and age) were also related to behavior. Several characteristics of the captive environment had statistically significant effects on stereotypic and exploratory behaviors of tigers: shade availability, the presence of a body of water, cage size, the presence of a conspecific, vegetation, environmental enrichment, and substrate type. There were significant differences in the behaviors of the two subspecies studied, but the reason for the differences are unclear. The results of this study showed clearly that tigers kept in more natural and complex enclosures performed less stereotypic pacing (unnatural behavior), and more exploratory (natural) behaviors than those housed in less natural enclosures. Reducing the stress level in captive tigers will enhance the animals' overall physical and psychological well being, which will in turn increase the success of captive breeding programs. These results suggest that captive tigers should be housed in large enclosures containing natural substrate and vegetation, water pools, ample shade, a variety of resting locations, and a variety of enrichment items. / Master of Science

Dažnai būna taip, kad internetiniame tinklapyje yra daug svarbių duomenų, tačiau jie nėra pateikti lengvai suprantamoje formoje. Būtent pateiktos informacijos interaktyvumo stoka, sąlygoja ne tik esamos informacijos sudėtingesnį suvokimą ar įsisavinimą, bet taip pat tiesiogiai siejasi su lankytojų srauto mažėjimu. Pastarosios situacijos buvimas ypač aktualus internetiniams tinklapiams, kuriuose kaupiama ir publikuojama daug specifinės srities duomenų. Šiame magistriniame darbe siekiama Exhibit įrankį pritaikyti korektiškam ir pilnavertiškam informacinės sistemos duomenų bazėje kaupiamų duomenų publikavimui ir vizualizavimui. Esamų sprendimų analizė leido atskleisti, kad Exhibit pritaikytas dirbti su statine, tai yra failuose saugoma informacija. Be to Exhibit vidinės duomenų struktūros formavimas gana ilgai užtrunka [Zhao et al., 2008]. Taigi, magistriniame darbe surastos ir pritaikytos priemonės leidžiančios Exhibit įrankį pritaikyti dažnai kintančios ir nuolatos atsinaujinančios informacijos atvaizdavimui. O taip pat, patobulintas metodas, kuris leidžia greičiau suformuoti vidinę Exhibit duomenų struktūrą. / There is common situation where are much of important data on the website, but the data are given in an inconvenient form to use. The lack of information interactivity determines complicated understanding and acquisition of the given information, also it directly determines the decline of website visitors. The being of the mentioned situation is topical to websites where collecting and publishing a lot of specific data. An aim of this research is to find a way to realize qualitatively publishing and visualization of the data stored in information system database. An analysis of the present decisions showed that Exhibit is great tool to solve existing problem. But this tool have a limitation. Exhibit is working with static (stored in files) information. Also creation of internal Exhibit data structure takes too long time. In this research were found and adapted facilities that let to use an Exhibit tool for publishing dynamic information. Also was improved method for faster internal Exhibit data structure creation.

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