The Development of Science Museum Websites: A Case Study
by Jim Angus
The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
The story of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County’s website [www.nhm.org] is in many ways the story of the web itself (Angus, 2000). It is a journey of discovery that starts before the advent of the web at a time when only universities and governments were using the Internet. It is a story of the particular needs of an organization and how the Internet and later the web provided answers. It is a journey that continues to this day as the medium itself evolves and adapts to the community’s needs and aspirations.
Super Science, Kiosks, Gophers and the Web: The Genesis of One of the First Museum Websites
In 1991, the museum sought to establish a comparative genetics laboratory that would enable museum researchers to more easily determine evolutionary relationships between different species of plants and animals. By 1991, the Internet was highly utilized by the academic community enabling a degree of collaboration that would lead to a rapid increase in the pace of scientific discovery. Genetic sequence repositories, established on the Internet, were key resources to help researchers determine evolutionary relationships.
The need to access these repositories drove the museum to seek funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The museum's application was successful and with the NSF’s help they established a direct connection to what was then known as NSFnet. This always “on” connection operated at speeds of 56 kb/sec, the speed of a standard PC modem today. This connection was the first building block in a foundation that would place the museum in a position to rapidly deploy a website at a time when the web was new and audiences were demanding substantial content.
The second block was provided by the museum’s educational outreach program. The museum held an annual open house for members, who were interested in the comparative genetics laboratory, but the lab was understaffed. The museum turned to multi-media, another relatively new innovation, to address the issue. Several animated presentations were developed and installed on laboratory computers. These presentations substituted for docent led explanations and established the necessary expertise to later develop web-based presentations.
The third block was set down when the museum developed software for informational kiosks that were to be placed in local businesses, most notably airports. The programming included all the basic facts about the museum and its programs and mirrored what would be needed in a basic website.
In 1993, the museum began to investigate the possibility of developing a “Gopher” site to provide a presence on the Internet. Gopher, a precursor to the web, offered a text-based interface with an innovation: hyperlinks. But already, this technology was old. A newer application called the World Wide Web was gaining popularity. It offered the same text-based interface and hyperlinks, but included an exciting option: the ability to link to pictures. There was only one experimental browser available and that browser could not display the images directly. Text could only be crudely formatted and position control of various page elements was minimal. But by the end of 1993, the museum had launched one of the first museum websites, using material that had been developed for the informational kiosks. The first “online” exhibit consisted of educational presentations derived from the multi-media developed by the genetics lab for the annual members’ open house. The University of Southern California hosted this site and it is still operational, though transformed [www.usc.edu/lacmnh].
Building Audiences: From Tricks to Substance
By 1995, the enormous potential of the web was becoming clear to a number of people. The University of California Berkeley Museum of Paleontology had launched a major website and a content starved community came to the site and kept coming. Because there is no “home page” for the World Wide Web, no “site map”, the location of a website was passed by word of mouth, or more accurately, by email. So two graduate students from a San Francisco Bay Area university (Stanford) came up with an idea, why not build a directory for Internet websites? And the brainchild that would eventually become “Yahoo!” was born. People quickly discovered the directory and came back again and again. Any site that was listed was certain to get visitors.
Museums understand the need for audiences. Exhibits and educational programs both build and reach out to audiences. The trick was for museums to do the same on the web. Clearly the key to building an audience was to have content and to be listed in a directory. The question was how to open that door. The museum decided to host a directory of cultural sites called “The Guide to Museums and Cultural Resources.” It was structured along the lines of the Stanford site but focused on the cultural sector. The museum actively collected links to cultural resources through a reciprocal exchange with the managers of other directories and by setting up a system where community members could add listings to The Guide using a simple web-based application. In a very short time, The Guide had links to thousands of new sites worldwide and more importantly, had tens of thousands of links back to The Guide. And each of those visitors to The Guide was able to easily click over to the museum's
website.
The museum also recognized the importance of a name. In 1996, the museum moved to secure “naturalhistorymuseum.org”, “nhm.org” and the “.com” variations. So in addition to referrals from The Guide and other Internet directories, any time a person entered "natural history museum" into one of the new search engines, the museum's site was likely to come up, if not first, then within the first half dozen listings.
Within a short time, the museum was getting tens then hundreds of thousands of hits per month to their website. However, aside from a few simple online exhibits, substance was seriously lacking. This changed in 1996 when the museum received funding from the National Science Foundation to produce an exhibit on the natural history of cats. Because of the success of the museum’s website, at least in terms of hits, it was easy to convince museum administrators to invest the resources to develop an online version of the exhibition. The Cats! Wild to Mild website [www.nhm.org/cats] was born and the museum committed itself to producing a series of online exhibits [www.nhm.org/exhibitions/online.html] that included fully developed lesson plans, classroom activities and other curricula for schools. A balance between content and directory referrals was achieved.
The success of the Cats! exhibit was not assured. The museum made an effort to actively involve the wider cat research community in the production of the website. Draft pages were offered up for review to a variety of Internet-based email distribution lists and ideas were solicited. This resulted in “buy-in” from these communities even before the launch of the website and with the launch, immediately resulted in links that referred more visitors to the website (Angus, 1998).
In 1997, the museum’s website was voted “Best Educational Use” at the first international Museums and the Web conference held in Los Angeles. This firmly established the success of the museum’s website in the minds of the museum’s administrators and the wider community.
Building Audiences: Make Their Websites Accessible
The museum fell upon hard times. Several scandals rocked the Los Angeles cultural community and helped to dry up sources of funding for the museum. The budget for the website, never generous, took a beating. With available resources, the museum would not be able to compete for new visitors against other, better-funded organizations. Nor would the museum be able to invest in any of the promising new technologies that could help leverage and re-purpose existing web-based content. How could the museum maintain its lead with limited funds? The key was discovered while attending an American Association of Museums annual meeting in 1998. A visually impaired woman suggested to a panelist (the author of this case study) that museums could reach out to another audience if they would make their websites accessible to persons with disabilities. Make their websites accessible. This comment resonated and inspired the museum to move forward in a direction that was both on the leading edge of web development and was ethically sound. Another benefit was that it would keep the museum's website in the spot light for several years to come. The museum led the way in accessible web design and sought to promote the use of standards that would provide equal access to all audiences, including those with disabilities (Angus, 2001; Bowen, 2003; Bowen, 2004).
A Single Content Repository: Multiple Audiences, Multiple Devices and Multiple Uses
During the course of seven years of growth, the Natural History Museum’s website grew until it consisted of over 10,000 files. How could all that content be managed? How could it be updated as technology changed? How could it be used to reach new audiences via new devices? Simply put, how could be used over and over in new ways?
The web grew explosively because it was technically easy to write web pages in HTML (HyperText Markup Language), the “language” of the web. Everyone knows that your friend’s 16-year-old son or daughter can have a web page up and running in an hour or two. However, HTML has a hidden and fatal flaw. It blends content and presentation. How can material be presented in a new context if the format, the style and the association with other pieces of content cannot be separated? A new language of the web, a new standard is required, and that standard is XML (eXtensible Markup Language), XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language) and XSLT (XSLTransformations) [www.w3c.org].
Information or content can be placed in a single location, a content repository. That information can be marked with XML so that a computer “knows” what that piece of content is and how it relates to other content. For example, information about a painting can be marked so that a computer knows what part is the name of the painting, its description and the artist’s name, and it will know much about the object’s relationship to other paintings. Other standards allow web developers to access specific pieces of content and present them with a particular “look and feel” or a particular context. The information itself remains untouched within the content repository and is available to be reused in different ways. This allows visitors to request specific kinds of information and have it returned in the context of the request.
Many organizations are using these standards to leverage their content, to repurpose the collective efforts of hundreds of staff, to reach the public with educational materials that can provide a teacher with new options and in many instances change a student’s life.
The separation of presentation and content can also allow the museum to reach new audiences. The museum’s content can be presented using more than one presentation template. A template can be designed for the “typical” Internet user, a template that easily meets the marketing goals of the museum. A second template can be created for individuals who are blind. The information can be presented in a format that allows a visually impaired person to use assistive technology that will read the page out loud. A third template can be created and used to serve information to visitors using hand-held portable devices. The same content that is on the website can be used to guide visitors within the museum.
The volume of electronic content continues to grow and museums must find ways to manage the content. Software that allows museums to manage web content is available. Many of these systems use the new standards that allow the separation of presentation and content. Although the software is expensive, in the long term the museum will find that it is able to better serve the public with accurate and up-to-date information. For example, the name and telephone number of the museum’s outreach coordinator may appear in as many as 20 places on a website or within a variety of electronic documents. A single edit within the content repository will update the information wherever it appears. This saves staff time and ensures that the museum remains an authoritative source of information.
Metadata is information about information. For example, metadata can be used to identify a particular piece of content as being of interest to a particular audience, perhaps middle school children. This allows the museum to design a website where visitors can personalize the site so that the content they most wish to view is presented first.
The web has changed a great deal since its inception and it will continue to grow and change, depending upon the community's needs and aspirations. Museums need to change as well, to adapt to the new world of instant access and wireless connectivity. Although the technology of the web provides instant access to a museum’s information, it is the content that is important, not the technology. Museums need to adopt standards and technologies that will allow them to preserve, manage and leverage that content into the future. If they do not, then the richness and educational value of our scientific heritage may be lost in an electronic sea of information.
Jim Angus
Book: E-learning and Virtual Science Centers, Idea Group Publishing, Hershey, USA. Editor: Dr. Ramanathan. Subramaniam, STE, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
