To reply to Helena and to let a ball start bouncing...:-)

Helena wrote:

>... would you be so kind as to start the ball rolling by telling us what
>the National Museum of Namibia is getting up to these days ? Any interests,
>concerns, new exhibitions ? We would love to hear your news and it might start
>us all talking.

While I do not believe this is the appropriate List to air the latest
National Museum linen:-), even though it is an ICOM member museum, the
opportunity provided by the ICOM-L moderator to reply to your questions is
irresistable:-)

We've been working hard at getting African museums on the web, particularly
as a result of stimulation gained from the Museums & the Web 1998
conference held recently in Toronto.  An unexpected invasion of hepatitis
at home prevented Namibian (and indeed African) representation at this very
important meeting:-), but also provided an unexpected window to browse most
of the museum web sites nominated for the MW98 best of the web awards.
This competition (?) appears to have become very popular among museums, and
I had a mixed-bag experience browsing the nominations; highly stimulating
in the one extreme and analgesic in the other!

While browsing the web on a reasonably fast 64k leased line via some more
than adequate ISP bandwidth in Namibia I was particularly disappointed by
the verrrry slow download times of a great majority of these nominated
sites.  Admittedly some of these sites are stunning, with incredible
graphics, animations, Java applets and other exploder/netscape charged
features, but a lot of these make it difficult, if not altogether
impossible to browse from out here in the sticks!  My main contention lies
with museum webmasters who have been lulled into complacency by their local
2Mbit fibre-optic traffic;  I suspect that a lot of these folks have
forgotten about grotty 9600 bps copper wire, 14400 bps modems (yes!) and
faulty dial-up hunting loops!  My recommendation to museum webmasters is to
try out some "alter"-benchmark tests - get somebody in Benin or Zambia (or
Namibia:-)) to download your website and give you an indication of where
the download slows down or stops altogether.  Perhaps most critically,
avoid page designs which remain blank or spotty blue or green or black for
ages before any evidence of content appears in the window.  Most people go
somewhere else when confronted by a blank window for more than 30 seconds,
unless they are really desperate to see the web site; I would argue that
that defeats the purpose of having a museum web site in the first place:-).

So now I, too, am open to criticism:-). To answer the rest of your
questions, please visit the National Museum of Namibia web site at

http://www.natmus.cul.na/

and the ICOM/AFRICOM/SAMP African Museum Internet Programme pages at

http://www.natmus.cul.na/fami.html


There's even an experimental photographic salon at

http://www.natmus.cul.na/salon/salon.html


Let us know what you think...:-)


Best regards

Joris Komen

National Museum of Namibia