As we are speaking about suggestions for museum web design, may I add a
couple of pleas to museum web designers in general from me in Italy?

-1-800 U.S. phone numbers are not accessible from abroad, so even if you
provide a 1-800 number, would you remember to include the regular phone
number, as well, please?

-Many sources of information readily available in the U.S. (even including
such basic sources as published international museum directories, which can
be quickly out-of-date, anyway) are not readily available outside the
States, or, should I say, at least in Italy, so please be kind to your
museum colleagues around the world, and be sure to add a page with a list of
the names, departments, phone and fax numbers, and e-mail addresses of your
personnel

-On a related note, it may sound obvious, but in searching the web to
contact museum colleagues it apparently isn't so obvious: please remember to
have a page with your mailing and physical site contact information
(addresses, phone/fax numbers, e-mails) clearly available; again, this is
more of a problem where the published international museum directories are
less available, I know, but it sure would be helpful to have such
information readily available online

-Many places outside the U.S. have to pay per-minute for being on-line, so
please keep the fancy graphics and big pictures which take so long to upload
to a bare minimum (this probably will create a more intelligible and
attractive page, anyway, personally speaking); a way around the picture
problem is to have "thumbnail" images which the viewer can choose to open;
the home page of a web site also may offer a "text-only" version which the
visitor can choose (dull, but it's better than spending an arm and a leg for
uploading time, only to have everything block up, anyway)

-Please test out the color combinations for background and text for easy
legibility

And one final, very personal plea:

-Please avoid black backgrounds as they are very hard on the eyes, and,
personally, I find them depressing, not chic (probably too much
self-revelation in this last statement, but so it goes! <grin>)

Hope this helps, Star
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