know.

CookbookTeaching and coursesNo. 20

A docent tour bookobject stories by gallery, read on a phone between tours

Recipe No. 20Teaching and courses

For
A volunteer coordinator training docents for a regional history museum’s new exhibition
You bring
The exhibition’s object list and label copy, the curator’s object files, the floor plan, and the questions docents heard on the preview tours
You get
A tour book of four galleries, a page per object with its key facts, its story and the questions visitors ask, checked by the curator and read by docents on password-protected links
Time
Two or three evenings before docent training, then half an hour a week while the exhibition runs
Works in
know.sh on the web · your AI assistant, through MCP
Keep it
Private while you work; share one document by a read-only link when it is ready.

Docents learn a new exhibition from a binder: the curator’s object files photocopied, a few pages of talking points, the floor plan. By the second week the binder is out of date, the story about the loom that turned out not to be true is still in half the copies, and nobody can find the answer to the question every school group asks in the weave room.

This recipe makes the tour book for Millrace: The Blackwater Valley Mills, 1840–1920. Your assistant, whichever one you use, builds it from the object list and label copy: a research document per gallery, and a numbered finding per object with its accession number, key facts, a story a docent can tell in a minute, and the questions visitors ask. You fix it up in the editor, and nothing reaches docents until the curator has checked it. Docents read each gallery from a password-protected link on their phones, and a correction you make on Tuesday is on every phone by Wednesday.

Photographs of the objects stay in the museum’s collections system, and the curator’s files stay with the curator. The tour book holds the words docents say.

What you will use

Shelf
One shelf for the exhibition, Millrace, with its opening and closing dates and where the curator’s files are kept.
Research document
One document per gallery; the overview gives the gallery’s theme and the route through it.
Finding
One finding per object, filed as a Question until the curator has checked it and as Evidence after.
Your AI assistant
Builds the galleries from the object list, finds dates and names that disagree, and drafts answers to docents’ questions for the curator.
The editor
Where you check each page against the curator’s files, write the stories in a docent’s voice and change a page’s type once it is signed off.
Margin notes
The curator’s sign-off, recorded beside the facts it covers: who checked them, when, against which file.
Revisions
What changed on a page after sign-off, and whether you or the assistant changed it.
Public link
A password-protected link per gallery that expires when the exhibition closes.

Method

  1. 1

    Have your assistant build the galleries

    Give your assistant the object list, the label copy and the floor plan, as files in Claude or ChatGPT or files a local client can read, but only what the museum allows you to share with an AI service. Ask it to make a shelf, Millrace, and one document per gallery — Gallery 1 — The river and the mill, Gallery 2 — The weave room, Gallery 3 — The mill village, Gallery 4 — The strike of 1903 — each overview giving the gallery’s theme and the route through it.

    Then one finding per object, in the order visitors meet them, every one filed as a Question. Galleries are the right unit because that is how a docent thinks in the middle of a tour: where am I, and what is in front of me?

  2. 2

    Give every object the same page

    Ask for the same five parts on every object page:

    • Accession number and label title, exactly as on the label.
    • Key facts: date, maker, material, where it came from.
    • The story: what a docent can tell in about a minute.
    • Questions visitors ask, each with its answer.
    • Do not say: the versions that are not true.

    The assistant can fill the first two from the label copy and leave the rest as headings. The stories and the Do not say lines are yours and the curator’s to write. The last part matters most: every exhibition has a story visitors love that the files do not support.

  3. 3

    Take the facts from the curator’s files

    Press Edit and go through each gallery with the curator’s files beside you. Every fact on a page should come from the file on that object, and the page should say so: write the file reference under Key facts. Where a published source backs a fact up — a digitised newspaper page, a record in a collections database, a county history — add it as a source link on the finding.

    Write the stories in a docent’s voice, short enough to tell standing up. Each page stays a Question until the curator has checked it, and the type shows on the link, so a docent can tell a checked page from a draft at a glance.

  4. 4

    Get the curator’s sign-off

    The curator cannot write in your library; only you can. Sit with the curator for an hour per gallery with the pages on a screen, or send the text by email. Correct what they correct as you go. When a page is right, select its key facts and leave a Note: “Checked by the curator, 14 October, against file 1987.14.” Then change the page to Evidence.

    Notes are private, so docents never see them, but they sit beside the facts they cover for as long as the exhibition runs. If a fact changes after sign-off, the page’s revisions show what changed and whether you or the assistant changed it.

  5. 5

    Ask your assistant to look for contradictions

    Four galleries built and edited over several evenings will disagree somewhere: the mill opens in 1842 in one gallery and in 1844 in another. Ask your assistant to read every gallery on the Millrace shelf and list each date, name and number that appears in more than one place with different values, quoting both. Have it file the list as a finding, not change the pages.

    Take the list to the curator. The assistant knows only what the pages say; it cannot tell which date is right, and it should not guess.

  6. 6

    Share each gallery with a password

    Press Share on each gallery, set a password, set the expiry to the day the exhibition closes, and copy each link as it appears; know.sh shows it once. From each object’s own page, leave out any page still filed as a Question. Ask your assistant for a Start here document with a word of welcome and the tour routes, paste in the four links, and share that too.

    Give docents the links and the password at training, in person, not in the lobby or on the museum’s website. They read in any phone browser, with nothing to install. The read count on each link tells you whether the book is being opened.

  7. 7

    Keep it current while the exhibition runs

    Docents will hear questions nobody expected. Ask them to email you those after each shift; they cannot add anything to the book themselves. Once a week, give the week’s questions to your assistant and ask for draft answers from what the pages already say, marked where the pages have no answer, filed as a finding. The drafts go to the curator, and the answers the curator approves go under Questions visitors ask.

    Mark the objects every tour stops at as Key. The link shows them as high importance, which is how a new docent learns the spine of the tour.

Specimen

MillraceNo. 52

Gallery 2The weave room

9 findings, 3,480 words, about 15 minutes, filed 22 September, revised 9 October, 5 highlights, shared.

The weave room gallery sets a row of looms against a recording of the noise that filled the real room. Visitors enter under the belt drive; stop first at the Northrop loom, because every question in this gallery starts there.

Route: the loom, the time clock, the case of shuttles and bobbins, then the pay records. Allow eight minutes. The loom recording plays every ten minutes; let it finish before you speak.

Findings

  1. 1Northrop automatic loom, about 1905Evidence, keyAccession 1987.14. The loom that let one weaver tend twenty. Do not say it was built in the valley; it came from Massachusetts.
  2. 2Time clock from the Upper MillEvidence, key, 1 noteAccession 1991.3.2. Hands punched in at 6:20 and the gate shut at 6:30. Visitors always ask what happened if you were late.
  3. 3Shuttles and bobbins caseEvidence“Kissing the shuttle”: weavers drew the thread through the eye by mouth. The detail children remember.
  4. 4Pay records, 1898–1903Evidence, 2 notesOn loan from the Blackwater County Archives. Do not read names aloud from the ledgers; the lender’s terms are on this page.
  5. 5Weaver’s apron, donated 2019QuestionWaiting for the curator: the family dates it to 1903, but the fabric may be later.

and 4 more findings

A gallery as a document, built by the assistant and fixed up by the coordinator: the route in the overview, then the objects in the order visitors meet them. The apron is still a Question, so it stays off the docents’ link.

Gallery 2The weave room

Shared from a library on know. 8 findings.

The weave room gallery sets a row of looms against a recording of the noise that filled the real room. Visitors enter under the belt drive; stop first at the Northrop loom, because every question in this gallery starts there.

Route: the loom, the time clock, the case of shuttles and bobbins, then the pay records. Allow eight minutes. The loom recording plays every ten minutes; let it finish before you speak.

Findings

  1. 1Northrop automatic loom, about 1905Evidence, high importance
  2. 2Time clock from the Upper MillEvidence, high importance
  3. 3Shuttles and bobbins caseEvidence, medium importance
  4. 4Pay records, 1898–1903Evidence, medium importance
  5. 5Belt drive and line shaftEvidence, medium importance
  6. 6Doffer’s benchEvidence, medium importance
  7. 7Mill whistleEvidence, low importance
  8. 8Cloth samples from the 1903 order bookEvidence, low importance

Set with know.

The same gallery on a docent’s phone after the password: eight checked objects, the apron left out, and none of the coordinator’s notes.

  1. You

    Using know.sh, read Gallery 2 — The weave room on my Millrace shelf. These are this week’s docent questions: what happened if you were late; were children allowed in the weave room; how loud was it. Draft answers only from what the pages say, and file them as a new finding in Gallery 2 called “Questions for the curator, week 3”.

  2. research_list_findingsRead the 9 findings in Gallery 2 — The weave room
  3. finding_addAdded “Questions for the curator, week 3” to Gallery 2 — The weave room, 10

  4. A local model through Ollama

    Two of the three have answers in the pages: lateness is covered under the time clock, and the noise under the belt drive. Children in the weave room is not in the book; I wrote “Not in the book” for the curator.

A local model doing a modest weekly job: reading one gallery, drafting answers from it, and saying plainly which question the pages cannot answer.

Prompts to try

  1. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model)

    Using know.sh, make a shelf called “Millrace” and one document per gallery from the object list and label copy I have attached: Gallery 1 — The river and the mill, Gallery 2 — The weave room, Gallery 3 — The mill village, Gallery 4 — The strike of 1903. In each, add one finding per object in the order on the list, titled by the label title, with five parts: Accession number and label title, Key facts, The story, Questions visitors ask, Do not say. Fill only the first two from the label copy, leave the rest as headings, and file every object as a Question.

  2. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model)

    Using know.sh, read every gallery on my Millrace shelf. List each date, name, number or place that appears on more than one page with a different value, quoting both lines and naming both pages. File the list as a new finding in Gallery 1 called “Contradictions for the curator” and do not change any page.

  3. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model)

    Using know.sh, draft a 45-minute highlights tour as a new document called “Highlights tour” on my Millrace shelf: the Key objects only, in walking order across the four galleries, with the minutes to allow at each and one linking sentence between galleries. Link each stop to its object page.

Variations

  • For school groups, make a separate document with the same objects, shorter stories and questions to ask the children, and send teachers the link before their visit.
  • For a historic house or a public garden, make a document per room or per bed; the object page works as well for a portrait or a rose.
  • When the exhibition draws on interviews with former mill families, the oral history collection recipe keeps consent and releases apart from the tour book.
  • A local history society mounting a small exhibition from one family’s papers can build its object pages from a family history kept the same way.

Where it falls short

  • There are no photographs. know.sh has no image upload, so docents learn the objects in the galleries and from the museum’s own collections system.
  • The curator cannot sign off inside know.sh. Sign-off happens in person or by email, and you record it in a note.
  • Docents read; they cannot add questions or corrections through a link. Those come to you, and you file them.
  • Each gallery needs its own link, so four galleries mean four links, gathered on a Start here page.
  • Smaller local models call tools less reliably, so check what any assistant files; Revisions shows every change.

A note on image rights, lenders and the curator’s word

Indexed under

Docent trainingExhibitionsObject pagesCurator sign-offTour routesVisitor questionsImage rights

See also