Al,

We are also puting a public access terminal in our museum.  At present we
plan to configure it with a trackball and keyboard and provide a list of
bookmarks to sites related to the 'topic of the month'.

I would be very open to coordinating this activity with other Natural
History Museums.  A permanent presentation composed of information from
different museums could be constructed which could include a 'topic of the
month' section.  A cooperative arrangement like this could greatly reduce
the amount of maintenance involved.  Each member institute would only be
responsible for maintaining its own portion, and responsibility for the
topic of the month could rotate between members.  We would also be building
a prototype 'virtual museum' which would be interesting to experiment with.

We are not presently interested in restricting access.  However, this
shouldn't prevent cooperation.  Those institutions that wish to limit
access can still do so.  We might consider doing this in the future,
perhaps after we obtain a second public terminal.

We are placing our terminal in our children's hands-on discovery center, so
we would be more interested in maintaining a part of interest primarily to
kids.

Jim

>Hello all,
>
>This message is directed primarily towards the Web Masters ( I use the term
>loosely) running sites for natural history museums, but all comments are
>welcome.
>
>The Exhibit Museum of Natural History at the University of Michigan in Ann
>Arbor is presently using a in-house web server, with multiple client
>stations, to build more depth and breadth into its physical displays.
>Visitors are able to call up related documents and images, pertinent to the
>particular display.  My question is, are there other museums on line
>interested, in forming a consortium of natural history museums (in our
>case) that would tailor part of their existing public web sites to allow
>limited Internet access?
>
>A visitor would be able to use our "public" terminal to visit other
>participating museums and explore related exhibits - but not gain access to
>the Internet at large.  The included links at each site would be determined
>by the host site.  All participating museums would have to agree to remove
>all at-large links from the part of the site made available to the project.
>(If the visited site had no outside links, the visitor would have to
>return to "home" to gain access to another site.)
>
>The simplest interface would be a mouse or trackpad, with no keyboard to
>enter URLs.  A more sophisticated version might include a modified browser,
>with the "go to URL" field and menus to the Internet deactivated.  This
>could allow for some typed input and exchanging of information between
>associated sites.  I think the technical details can be worked out if the
>willingness to provide the content is there.
>
>Comments can be directed to me our the list if you think it is appropriate
>to all.
>
>al
>
>
>Visit the Exhibit Museum on line  < http://www.exhibits.lsa.umich.edu/ >
>
>Al McWaters
>Exhibit Designer / Net. Admin.               Internet: [log in to unmask]
>Exhibit Museum of Natural History        Phone:    (313) 747-1379
>1109 Greddes Ave.                                  Fax:         (313) 747-2767
>Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1079         http://www-personal.umich.edu/~alanmcw/

Jim Angus
Information Technology and Hypermedia Programs
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
900 Exposition Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA  90007

voice:  213/744-3317
fax:    213/746-2999
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