Our own community has recently announced its own "Best of the Web" awards
(at the recent Museums and the Web bash in N'awleans). See
http://www.archimuse.com/mw99/best/
for details.
Am I alone in being baffled by the results?
I had high hopes of the excellent jury, co-ordinated by our very own
Maria Economou (if it is not too presumptuous to claim her for
Scotland/MCG).
Looking first at the winner of the "Online Exhibition" category - the
Guggenheim Museum's "Cyberatlas" site, I found it pretentious,
arty and confusing. Those are just the printable terms that came
into my head on looking at the site. Just to take one example of
unneccessary tricksiness, I felt it would be more comfortable to turn my
monitor on its side to read the commands on the navigation bar ;-)
Then I had a look at the "Best Research Site" - the National Museum of
American Art. Or I tried to have a look at it - it was so slow our proxy
server gave up the ghost (and this before most of the USA is awake).
Similarly the Walker Art Center ("Best Overall Site"). In fact the only
result I would not quibble with is "Best Museum Professionals' Site" - CHIN.
But honestly, the Guggenheim's site demonstrates all that I feel is worst
about really BAD museum web sites (all style and no content), and the other
two could be the greatest things since sliced bread, but it is all for nought
if they are going to be so slow to download.
Just my opinions, of course......
(and sour grapes, because the museum I nominated - Colorado Springs
Pioneers Museum - got nothing!).
---
Ian O. Morrison, Scottish Museums Documentation Officer &
SCRAN Data Co-ordinator. http://www2.scran.ac.uk/staff/ianm/
-100,000 lemmings can't be wrong......-
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