UF students and Gainesville families gathered in front of the giant mammoth fossil at the Florida Museum of Natural History with phones in hand and smiles on their faces Wednesday.
They were celebrating “Museum Selfie Day,” an international effort to make people aware of their local museums. The day was started four years ago by Mar Dixon of London, who runs a website about museums. Dixon began the website after taking her daughter on a museum outing, said Catherine Carey, the museum’s public program coordinator.
It was the first time the museum held the event.
Museum visitors participated in a scavenger hunt and posted selfies in front of their favorite exhibits using the hashtags #floridamuseum and #museumselfieday.
Carey said the event used social media to encourage young people, particularly UF students, to visit the museum. Although the museum does want more students to visit, there aren’t problems with low attendance numbers.
“We had over 3,000 people come in on Saturday,” Carey said. “Those numbers aren’t going down.”
Students posted selfies to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, she said. About 64 posts were made on the social media platforms by the end of the event.
Photos were live streamed using a projector in the museum’s lobby. Museum employees and interns judged their favorite photos and awarded the best selfie takers various prizes, including free tickets to the butterfly exhibit.
Carey said she hopes the event will become an annual occurrence and more students will take advantage of their free admission to the museum.
After striking a pose in front of the cave exhibit with her friends, Kasia Wiech, 19, said she was having more fun than during previous museum events she has attended.
“Selfies are part of our culture, and it’s appealing to people my age,” the UF biology freshman said. “I feel like this event is more interactive with the actual museum.”
Jaime Benedict, a 20-year-old UF nursing junior, snaps a selfie in front of the mammoth skeleton at the Florida Museum of Natural History during “Museum Selfie Day.”
