We aim at being an educational site.  Our site currently gets nearly a half
a million hits per month so we're doing something right. Almost 25% of our
hits come from visits to just one of our on-line presentations, and we
currently have in excess of a dozen on-line presentations and more in the
works.  We also aim at providing downloadable teacher's lesson plans and
curricula.

We also aim at being a "community" based web site.  Much of our material is
developed in collaboration with other, often local museums.  For example,
our presentation on "Identity and Dreams" (art work, prose and poetry of
local African American children exploring their identity and dreams) was
created through a partenership with the Pasadena Armory Center for the
Arts.  Much of our educational material for our newest on-line exhibit
"Africa" was developed by the Field Museum in Chicago and the Bowers Museum
of Cultural Art in Santa Ana.

Because our site is large (and we do not spend a lot of money maintaining
it--we use volunteers), we've built in a subject guide so that visitors can
quickly locate content of interest to them.  We reserve a portion of the
opening page for promotion of special exhibits.

At present, we don't have a single commercial activity on our web site.  We
will at some point put up an on-line giftshop.  Once we have a fair amount
of traffic, I'll feel comfortable investing the time and effort into
developing the giftshop.

We were voted "Best Educational Use" museum web site at the first "Museums
and the Web" conference this spring.

I agree absolutely with Troy that the best way to start is with a small
page and once the finished product is up, you'll expand the page as needed.
Our page started out as a simple presentation that covered the following:

DIRECTIONS

PARKING

HOURS & ADMISSION

CALENDAR

MEMBERSHIP

TOURS

EXHIBITIONS

EDUCATION

EMPLOYMENT

STAFF

LINKS

Jim



>Aim for commercial - but don't compete with it.  Museums have the added
>benefit of having lots of interesting stuff that corporations just don't
>have.  In fact, some corporate web pages allude to the company's earlier
>times, and put up a small "collection" of historic products and/or origins.
> www.joeboxer.com is one such example.
>
>We can still have hard-core content; just put it 2 or 3 levels down so as
>not to scare people off; your upper pages can contain "gleanings" from
>that.  Don't forget, though, that the more content you have the more
>expensive it gets - just ask any Oracle (TM) professional!
>The "balance" is struck with your web page design - how the pages are
>presented - rather than the actual info they contain.  A nice easy to use
>interface with an uncluttered layout will go a long way to holding your
>visitor's interest.
>The best way to get started is to get a small, "finished" product up, then
>build it as the need arises.
>
>Troy Whitbread
>[log in to unmask]
>
>----------
>> From: kiz Stonell <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Museums on the Web
>> Date: September 30, 1997 10:57 AM
>>
>> Which are the best / worse museum web sites ?
>>
>> What makes a good site - are we supposed to be commercial or informative
>> - how is the balance struck.  There is not so much information on the
>> internet in Britain and it is such an emerging thing, I would appreciate
>> opinions/advice from museums with successful sites or anyone who knows
>> of a 'good' site
>>
>>
>> --
>> kiz Stonell

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

http://www.nhm.org

voice:  213/763-3317
fax:    213/746-2999
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When they told me I was average, they were just being mean.