Just to 'miss the point massively' one more time, I'll leave you with a short story...

"You employ a group of builders to build a brand new museum in a brand new building.  You specify that it must have a ramp for wheelchair access.  The building is duly finished and the new exhibition is absolutely fantastic - truly innovative and exciting.  Unaccountably, the builders put in a flight of stairs instead of the ramp.  'Oh well, never mind, no point making a fuss.  After all, we've done the market research and wheelchair users aren’t the core demographic anyway' you say, and pay off the builders.  A wheelchair user arrives, wanting to see this new and exciting exhibition.  Puzzled at the lack of ramp on this brand new building they give you a call to ask why this is the case.  You tell them to stop carping on about a ramp, after all, the exhibition inside the building is really great, so what on earth have they got to complain about?"  

Hmmm...  Somehow, I can't see the above story happening... 

Thanks to all for the lively debate!

Paul




-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jon Pratty
Sent: 15 June 2004 20:28
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Launch of www.ingenious.org.uk

From Jon Pratty, Editor, 24 Hour Museum
 
Nick Poole's excellent posts to this group about the National Gallery sites should be re-iterated on this occasion:
 
"The point, when you get right down to it, is to take a responsible
attitude to the way in which we present ourselves online so that we
minimise the obstacles people experience in getting to our stuff."

These are Nick's own views, not necessarily MLA's, but they are key. He also goes on to say we need to adhere to reasonable and widely understood guidelines for best practice - but that we must balance this with trying to make sites that are fun to look at and delightful to use. 

As ever, the NOF-digi standards are a good starting point, as are the new Minerva standards. 

But my point is this - think about the audience, and who you are working to communicate to. Museum culture on the web is in its infancy compared to the 250 years of orthdox museum practice in this country. Museum ICT staff and their technical advisers are now having to get to grips with mass publishing methods.

This means getting to know your audience, mixing in some marketing expertise and lots of journalistic content to get people looking in regularly. While you could spend your time posting to this list with complaints about Ingenious not displaying on your version of Netscape, it misses the point massively.

The Science Museum team have developed a really great looking site, that animates the subject in a playful, accessible journalistic style as well as making innoviative use of XML to navigate, harvest and display collection records from three different national collections. That's really cool.

As well as that, along with the Dana Centre, and future plans for the net, the Science Museum bods have begun to redefine a new, really interesting and fresh approach to the audience. Along with the Making of the Modern World site, I think they've made some funky websites. If they win awards for this work - and I think they should - carping about issues like accessibility to the nth degree will look pretty silly.  

I feel we're in danger of missing the point of the achievement here. 

Jon Pratty, Editor, 24 Hour Museum

 

 

 

 

     

 

 

 


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