# Virtual Reality in Museums: Exploring the Experiences of Museum Professionals
## Methods
### Selection of Participating Museums and Interviewees  
Research participants were approached and recruited after an extensive research on current or recent uses of VR in museums, resulting in a list with museums around the world that either have VR installations in their permanent exhibition or have hosted VR technologies sporadically in temporary exhibitions. We comprised a list of 70 museums from the US, Europe, Asia, and Australia, which received invitations to participate in our research. Apart from the museums' details the list also included the names of curators or other museum professionals responsible for new or emerging technologies in the particular museums. When such details were found, invitations were sent out personally to these museum professionals. When such details were not available, we contacted the museum directly, asking to be directed to the appropriate member of the personnel. It is worth noting that we were interested in talking to museum professionals who had a first-hand experience with VR technologies at their workplace and/or that have extensive experiences with a variety of emerging technologies in their museums. In some cases, despite the willingness of some professionals to participate, two factors rendered this impossible. In many cases the VR projects carried out were \"one-off\" projects as part of an experiment or a temporary exhibition. In these cases, often the person who was involved with the project did not work for the museum any longer, and there was no dedicated department to continue that work. As a result, current museum employees could not answer our questions. In other cases, the VR projects were carried out in collaboration with a company, which managed and developed the VR, with minimal involvement by the museum staff. Thus, again the museum professionals could not answer our questions, directing us instead to the companies that they had collaborated with. The 16 museum professionals who eventually took part in this research come from museums from different countries, providing a wide range of geographical coverage: The US, Australia, Italy, the UK, the Netherlands, and Finland. We also managed to recruit professionals from a wide range of museums: art, archaeological, science, natural history, and art museums. This facilitated a holistic approach in our analysis, irrespective of the museum type. As will be shown, although the use of VR has different aims in each museum type, the advantages, challenges, and limitations faced by museum professionals are common across all museum types. The 15 participating museums are: National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library, the Pacific Science Centre, the Tate, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Rijksmuseum, the Cleveland Museum of Art,the Dali Museum, the Natural History Museum of Utah, the Australian National Maritime Museum, the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Museum of Finland. All interviewees signed consent forms allowing us to analyze and use their interviews while all data presented in this paper are anonymous. Regarding the participants' profile, they varied widely in terms of expertise and educational backgrounds, however they were all responsible for managing either information resources, media and technologies in the museum, or exhibition and audience development. They hold a variety of positions, ranging from more traditional museum positions (such as Educators, Heads of Interpretation, Heads of Public Programs) to more technology-oriented positions (such as Chief Digital Information Officer, Chief of Digital Strategies, Interactive Producer, Game Designer, Head of Digital Content).