It's strange how, again and again, visiting online exhibitions and other WWW museum offerings gets portrayed as an ALTERNATIVE to actually, personally, physically walking in the front door of a real museum and being IN it. The same argument might be made about the lovely coffee table books we have about great museums or specific blockbuster exhibitions...a book is a poor substitute for being there. In neither case should it be couched as an either/or situation! Each presentation mode has its own qualities; it's our challenge as museum folks to orchestrate the media in the way that best fulfills our mission within our resources. I challenge, too, the hint that the electronic medium is subordinate, or only introductory, to another. "Being there" isn't everything. There was much about the AZTEC exhibit in Denver that was stellar, but my strongest personal recollection from the visit my son and I made was the sense of being in a crowd...and it was packed...of zombies, all shuffling in mute obedience to the urgings of their earphones. I would have learned much more from that exhibit online for two reasons: 1) I would have been able to address each and every object individually and for as long as I wanted, not bothered by jostling and the human current; and 2) I would have been better able to deviate from the pre-ordained route of march to go back and look at an object again as it gained new relevance for me in the light of other objects I saw later. This latter point--visitor control--is a qualitative difference in Web sites that I think is important. There are lots of disadvantages to the small screen and the technology behind it, but one thing I can do is visit an online exhibit at 6AM (when I'm freshest), navigate it in a variety of directions, duck out to another site to reference related information that may be in Holland, and come back to pick up my thread. I've learned recently that that this is called a "constructivist" approach...people construct their own knowledge, for themselves, based on the knowledge they already bring to the situation. It's a refreshing turn-of-the-tables for an interpreter who has spent 30 years leading people by the senses down the tour/booklet/exhibit/AV program path that *we* decided was best for *them!* In any case, let's consider the Web as just one of MANY alternatives for reaching our interpretive goal(s), and use any that reach our desired audiences in the ways we want. Tom Vaughan \_ Cultural The Waggin' Tongue \_ Resource [log in to unmask] \_ Management, [log in to unmask] \_ Interpretation, 11795 County Road 39.2 \_ Planning, & Mancos, CO 81328 USA \_ Training