We've got about 500 museums in our "Guide to Museums and Cultural Resources
on the Web".  The list has grown a bit too big to post to museum-L.  It is
still available, just request a copy from me, or even better (and save me
time), visit the site (http://www.usc.edu/lacmnh/webmuseums).  Since the
data is in a database program now, I can provide the list in a variety of
forms.  You are free to do what you wish with the data.

I'd like to say that I appreciate the efforts of all the people who take
the time notify me of sites I'm unaware of, and to continue the good work.
I am constantly modifying the 'submission' form to increase the information
content of the submitted data.

As of yesterday, the data was converted into a Filemaker Pro database.
This means I can now sort the list by any field, including key word (and
spell check it, thank god).  If any of you are affiliated with a museum
which has a site on the web, please check your listing, and send me any
changes and a description of the site (embedded html is okay).

For those of you who are interested...the lists of museums that you see in
the guide are generated directly by the database program, including the
headers, indices, and footers.  The html can easily be written into
'calculation' fields, and the results exported directly to the html
documents seen on the web.  No more writing messy html!  As soon as our new
server is up and running, I hope to begin to adapt other databases, already
extant, for presentation on the web.

Experience gained from maintaining a list of web museums is readily
applicable to providing collection data for the Internet public.  Creation
of the museum guide database (from the simple html lists) took about 15
hours, using a commercially available, easy to use database program.  If I
had known what I was doing, the time could have been cut down considerably.
Update of the guide is now easy.  I enter new records (one or two a day) as
they arrive, then click a button, and the data is exported into the various
html documents.  I'll gradually broaden the key word list field, which will
allow the data to be sorted more finely.  Once our new server is  running,
I hope to provide an interface so that the public can directly search the
database (not possible now, I can't use CGI scripts and our space is on
loan).

The list maintenance has consumed a considerable amount of time, and I am
relieved that maintenance will be easier.

I maintain the list for several reasons:

1.  To increase public awareness of the Natural History Museum of Los
Angeles County.
2.  As a public service.
2.  As a learning device.

Therefore... I would appreciate any links you all might be pleased to add
to your sites which point back to the guide.

Thanks,

Jim





Jim Angus
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
900 Exposition Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA  90007

(213) 744-3317
[log in to unmask]
http://www.usc.edu/lacmnh