I hope the "Forum" article will get posted on Museum-L.  In a parallel
vein, the National Association for Interpretation (NAI) sponsors an
annual interpretive publications competition.  This year, for the first time,
home pages (Web sites, actually) will be a category in the competition.
The criteria are not fully developed yet, but based on the general principles
of interpretation and the standards used by about a dozen major Web-
rating organizations, I expect the evaluations will be based on viewer
appeal (viewer experience, interest, involvement), content (including facts,
grammar, etc.), design (including text/graphics balance, links), and general
mechanics (links work, loads fast, etc.), not necessarily in the order listed
as far as importance.

Folks might look at Bill LeFurgy's "Culture in Cyberspace: Museums and
Exhibits" list at <http://www.radix.net/~wlefurgy/hot_muse.htm>.

Personally, I am always charmed by the presentation of the Oneida Indian
Nation at <http://one-web.org/oneida/>, particularly in their online exhibits.

I think we need to not only honor the outstanding sites; we need to be clear
as to WHY they are outstanding and take to task the atrocious MISUSES of
this new medium.  I know a home page that takes over 4 minutes to load...
and isn't worth much to the 0.001% of viewers who wait that long.  I've seen
a home page that had the name of the site spelled wrong, along with other
spelling and grammar errors on the first page!  We've all probably seen home
pages with dead links...nothing behind any of the buttons.

There's no way, of course, to ensure overall excellence in any medium.
We can, however, provide feedback to sites on how they look in the eyes
of the world when they fail to appreciate the unique qualities of publishing
on the internet.  I'm consistently finding, for example, that the best informati
on
on areas of the National Park System are on personal and commercial Web
sites, not on the "official" park pages, which tend to be lists of administrivia
.

Best wishes,

Tom V.

--

Tom Vaughan            \_    Cultural
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