>I am writing an article for the EXHIBITIONIST, the National Assn for
>Museum Exhibition's semi-annual journal  - about online exhibits. My angle
>is to critique some of them, hopefully the best, or the popular (why are
>they popular?) and try to figure out why all of the websites call
>themselves exhibits - I haven't actually too much of anything I would call
>an exhibit. Most of what I have seen in reference to this subject is along
>the lines of numbers of hits or visits, such as Jim Angus' message
>relates. Can anyone share any qualitative info about these sites as


   Hi ---


        I cannot speak for other natural history museums, but the UCMP web
site has tried hard to use the technology available to create something
that imparts quality information in many different formats. I do not like
the word interpretive too much, since I guess it sounds a lot like
interpretive dance... obviously dance is interpretive... why state it that
way? Why capitalize Interpretive?

        Whatever the case... I do not call web sites exhibits or virtual
museums or anything else.  I call them web sites because anything else does
both not enough and too much justice to the Web.  I might deign to call web
sites a device to communicate information, but thats pretty vague too,
cause so is radio or television and the web is not that.

        So grab a look for yourself and enjoy!

        http://ucmp1.berkeley.edu/

Cheers,


Robert Guralnick | Museum of Paleontology | Department of Integrative Biology
University of California | Berkeley, CA 94720 | (510) 643-9746 |
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