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Shalom,

Since this is my first post to this list I will introduce myself. 

My name is Hanan Cohen and I am the new Webmaster of the Bloomfield
Science Museum Jerusalem, Israel. http://www.mada.org.il/en/ . I am
"new" in the sense that I have been a short time on this job and also in
the sense that I am new to museums as a professional. 

One of the issues I have been thinking about since starting here is how
to connect the physical world to the web. We know there is a problem of
directing people from paper to web and also from speech to web. At the
most, we direct people to a top directory and they somehow manage from
there.

(See the discussion here at MCG titled "Putting web addresses on
interpretation")

The Bloomfield Science Museum strives to be an educational resource for
its visitors - the general public and the formal education system.

Writing long URL's on paper in order to propose content on our site to
our audience  is a problem.

Then I had an idea. 

Every page on our site has a unique, short ID.

I have created a new box that is displayed on every page.

The box says "go to page number:", has an input line and below that
"current page number: wxyz"

When I want to direct someone to a page, all I have to do is see in what
page number I am at and write or say a short number. 

The recipient just has to type a short number and go directly to the
intended page. No need to type a long URL or click through menus.

Now, we at the museum, will have to learn how to use this feature in our
publications, displays and daily use of the website. It's a whole new
way of thinking which we will have to develop. I hope the new feature
will really solve the problem it tackles. 

I would be grateful for any feedback on this solution and its
implementation.

Currently, there isn't much English content on the site. To get a better
experience of the page number idea, I suggest visiting the "Exhibitions"
section. 

Thanks,

Hanan Cohen - Webmaster
Bloomfield Science Museum Jerusalem
http://www.mada.org.il

(cross posted to mcn-l)

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