I just received Cary's & Joris's notification of the site. I quickly
visited it, the first page came up in about 2 minutes (at ca 2 k a second),
the link to the english version took about 3 minuted, and after waiting for
5 minutes with a blank screen waiting for the natural history standards to
download (still at ca 2 k a second), I called it a day. Definitely not a
site I will bookmark or recommend.

Eugene Marais

Entomology Centre
National Museum of Namibia
P.O. Box 1203, Windhoek, Namibia
Tel: + 264 61 29 34 305/354
Fax: + 264 61 22 86 36
http://www.natmus.cul.na/ento/index.html




-----Original Message-----
From:   Joris Komen [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Thursday, August 06, 1998 8:38 AM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Re: Handbook of Standards; Documenting African Collections

Dear ICOM-L(isters),

As one of a considered number of African museum collaborators in
the AFRICOM Handbook of Standards project, I was stunned into
complete silence (this is a rare phenomenon:-)) for some minutes
while trying to browse the newly finished Handbook of Standards
pages hosted at

http://www.icom.org/afridoc/

as an ICOM internet resource.

I was flabbergasted; with complete abandon (of ICOM page
conformity), this entry page comes up as a graphic disaster
zone...no text whatsoever, and a loooong wait for a visual rehash
of the handbook's front cover (I'm browsing from a 57k modem
connection to swipnet.se in Stockholm, so I don't have bandwidth
problems for a change:-)).  Finding my way around the first
english page (99% graphics), I then land up in a horrendous frame
environment, with broken links and more slow graphics.

These pages suck!

What I found really disturbing is the fact that I'm listed as an
author of this Handbook!!  Yesterday was the *first* time I
received news of this disasterous set of pages, and I am somewhat
more than a tad annoyed that there was absolutely zero
consultative process with the *authors* of the Handbook - is this
becoming a pervasive phenomenon at the ICOM secretariat in
Paris??

Hugely disappointed!

Joris Komen

National Museum of Namibia