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Abstract. We describe an electronic guidebook prototype and report on a study of its use in a historic house. Visitors were given a choice of information delivery modes, and generally preferred audio played through speakers. In this delivery mode, visitors assigned the electronic guidebook a conversational role, e.g., it was granted turns in conversation, it introduced topics of conversation, and visitors responded to it verbally. We illustrate the integration of the guidebook into natural conversation by showing that discourse with the electronic guidebook followed the conversational structure of storytelling. We also demonstrate that visitors coordinated object choice and physical positioning to ensure that the electronic guidebooks played a role in their conversations. Because the visitors integrated the electronic guidebooks in their existing conversations with their companions, they achieved social interactions with each other that were more fulfilling than those that occur with other presentation methods such as traditional headphone audio tours.

This article explores how members of small work groups use audible and visible actions to coordinate conversational interaction. The analysis of this activity context includes some methods for re-engaging turn-by-turn talk after it has lapsed, as well as some methods for making relevant a lapse in talk, and disengaging it, once it has been engaged. In addition, the actions positioned at conversational boundaries, both pre-re-engaging and post-disengaging , show the members' orientation to phases of lapse and phases of turn-by-turn talk. (Talk in activity, social organization, conversation analysis)*

Abstract. This study examines visitors' use of two different electronic guidebook prototypes, the second an iteration of the first, that were developed to support social interaction between companions as they tour a historic house. Three studies were conducted in which paired visitors' social interactions were video-and audio-recorded for analysis. Using conversation analysis, the data from the use of prototype 1 and prototype 2 were compared. It was found that audio delivery methods were consequential to the ways in which visitors structurally organized their social activity. Further, the availability of structural opportunities for social interaction between visitors has implications for the ways in which the learning process occurs in museum settings.

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