ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
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Charles,

I believe their book is due out soon. From the Karen Rader's faculty website at Virginia Commonwealth: 

"Rader is currently co-authoring a book with Victoria Cain (NYU, Museum Studies), provisionally titled Life on Display: Revolutionizing Museums of Natural History and Science in America, 1910-90 (under contract with University of Chicago Press).  Life on Display looks at how ongoing efforts to create popular educational displays compelled public natural history and science museums in the United States to develop new institutional identities twentieth-century science and American culture."

Sadly,  I worked with her on a panel this summer and the subject didn't come up. I think it should be out within the year or sooner.

As an aside the history of science in museums is currently a very busy field in the academic press as part of work being done in what is called Public Science. There have been a lot of good articles and books in the last decade. I mentioned working with Dr.Rader this summer. That was for a panel at the International Congress for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Manchester UK. Here is a link to the program for that panel complete with abstracts.http://www.ichstm2013.com/programme/guide/s/S008.html All of the speakers (except me, sigh.) have really good articles available on some topic related to the history of museums, zoos, aquaria, etc. I already mentioned the special section of Isis devoted to science museums. I would also recommend work done by Bernie Lightman,  Aileen Fyfe, and Iwan Morus, all on popular science in Victorian England. I especially like Morus's Frankenstein's Children: Electricity, Exhibition, and Experiment in Early-Nineteenth-Century England. Morus  has written a lot on the role of spectacle in science and though he doesn't always explicitly connect the dots, it doesn't take Dan Brown to see the continuity between modern practice in contemporary science centers and Victorian galleries.  At the aforementioned ICHSTM,  Morus and Fyfe participated in a living history presentation recreating many of the public demonstrations and exhibitions from the Victorian period. From an academic stand point it was wonderful to see a presentation of academic work created to educate and entertain the public. As a veteran of hands on learning in museums of science and technology I thought it needed polish, so I hope they get lots of practice.

On the American side I would also recommend almost anything by Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, but her Teaching Children Science: Hands-On Nature Study in North America, 1890-1930, is wonderful. It doesn't sound at first blush to be about science museums, but museums were major players in this movement, and she illustrates nicely that museums have been involved with public education for a very long time. It is not necessarily a recent phenomenon.

Anyway, I could write about this all day. (and I have to if I ever what to finish my dissertation) Like I said, this is a very vibrant field right now in academia. It's a shame the two world's are not more connected. 

Matthew White
On Sep 1, 2013, at 10:03 PM, Charles Carlson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
> *****************************************************************************
> 
> Hi Matthew,
> Thanks for posting.  I hadn't seen it, and I wondered what happened with the research.
> C
> On Sep 1, 2013, at 6:23 PM, Matthew White <[log in to unmask]> wrote:


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