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