Underexplored territories: the study of visitor records in comment books of two Brazilians science museums

ABSTRACT In this qualitative and exploratory work, we studied the commentary books of two Brazilian museums and science centers- the Science House (Casa da Ciência) of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the Science and Life Museum (Museu Ciencia e Vida) of the Center for Science and Higher Education at Distance Foundation of the State of Rio de Janeiro - in order to understand and explore its potential to collect data on publics opinions. We collected 1,724 comments from 10 books, from 2011 to 2018. For exploration and analysis, we adopted content analysis, as well as a protocol that divides comments into: pre-active, active and proactive. We were interested in analyzing the comments identified as active and proactive, totaling 1,512 records, organized into the following categories: accessibility; affectivity; science and learning; team; exhibition; infrastructure; role of museum spaces in society. The multiplicity of factors that could be listed when studying commentary books, allows us to affirm that they are a rich source of information about the audiences that go to museums and their demands. However, they are still underexplored territories, both in museums and in academic areas, and these records cannot be silenced and forgotten.