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Last month, the New York Hall of Science tried to auction off a specially designed manhole cover on eBay, which was donated by Con Edison.
The bids on eBay came in lower than the asking price of $5,000, so now the Hall of Science is shopping the manhole cover - designed for the new millennium and called "Global Energy" - to the major auction houses in New York City.
"It's called creative fund-raising," says Alan J. Friedman, the museum's director since 1984. "We need to learn how to be entrepreneurs."
Hidden treasure
Since Mr. Friedman took the helm of the flailing science and technology center in Corona Park, Queens, originally built for the 1964-65 World's Fair, it has gained a leading reputation among science educators nationwide. But an out-of-the-way location and little attention to marketing have kept the Hall of Science out of the limelight enjoyed by its wealthier and savvier local counterparts.
However, even though the New York Hall of Science is flush with competition - both directly from the Jersey City-based Liberty Science Center, and indirectly from a wealth of other institutions like the Children's Museum and the American Museum of Natural History - industry experts insist that New York City is actually underserved with interactive science centers.
Necessary steps
"There is certainly room for more resources in that area in New York City," says Bonnie VanDorn, executive director of the Association of Science-Technology Centers...