Thank you, Ian.
Clear, and to the point.
You've summed up very well what many of us think. I have been reluctant to
get off the fence and sign up. Now I'll confidently jump into the 'not
signing up' garden.
Louise Perrin
Collections Officer
Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum
East Cliff
Bournemouth
BH1 3AA
T 01202 451810
F 01202 451851
-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Edelman [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 25 March 2004 18:16
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Internet Hosts
I have written several published letters to the Museums Association on this
matter, the last when the MA briefing paper 27, sent with the October
edition of the Journal displayed a distinct sense of panic at the low
uptake of the dot museum domain name.
Instead of finding out why museums are disinterested, MuseDoma began
resorting to scare tactics ie "Museums that have not registered their names
may find their identities usurped by all kinds of unwanted intruders". This
has rarely happened with the current domain suffixes and is unlikely to be
an issue for dot museum.
In addition, the list of 'benefits' for its use was remarkably short and
somewhat unconvincing. Their suggestion that a dot museum domain name will
make a museum easier to find on the web is nonsense, particularly as the
three level dot museum structure often produces longer and more unwieldy
names with unpredictable word combinations, such as
www.victoriaandalbert.london.museum. Try typing 'victoriaandalbert' without
putting spaces between the three words making up the domain.
At a conference a couple of years ago, I recollect Cary Karp saying
that .mus was definately unavailable for museums because of the 'music'
lobby. That suffix would have been far better, being three letters shorter
for a start. The word museum is so frequently mis-spelled, (Google has
indexed 98,100 examples) which help.
Although there have been a fair number of dot museum registrations, it is
significant that the majority of museum websites that have dot museum
registration still use their original domain as the primary locator.
As Rachel Cockett says, most users don't type the URL longhand, but use a
bookmark or search link. They may attempt to guess a domain name and type
it into an address bar, but unless it is something very obvious an attempt
to guess a dot museum domain name will surely result in disappointment. Few
users will even notice the domain name when they arrive at a site via a
clickable link.
Another significant factor is that dot museum registration is far more
expensive than the previously established domain suffixes and as Hampshire
Museums Service has 19 museum sites, there is no way I could justify the
expenditure to register each site once let alone potential variations.
Musedoma said that "Museums have nothing to lose by adopting .museum",
except $200 in the first year and $100 per year thereafter for each
registration, and in my view, until the cost benefits are more quantifiable
I believe that museums have little to gain from adopting it.
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