NOT "your websites are wonderful . . . but you have to start over from scratch." RATHER "your websites are wonderful, and by thinking about them in new ways you can make them much better."

Proposal: Integrating museum websites with other forms of websites offers a way of solving two kinds of problems that museums, particularly small ones, face -- (a) letting people know what they have and (b) providing a context so people can understand these objects and their importance.

Why aren't we doing this already?

• Information technology does not begin with computers

• The museum and the printed Book

• What can an online museum do better than a book:

• interactivity
• multi-disciplinarity
• interdisciplinarity, or making connections
• contextualization

• Lessons of hypermedia
• connectivity should be the rule
• borders are provisional, arbitrary, and imposed only for purposes of conceptualization
• borders are open: always assume your visitor will fall through the roof from nowhere

• Final proposals

  • museums should concentrate both on attraction (or getting-people-in) sites and true on-line museums
  • share materials with other museums
  • share with non-museum sites

  E-mail: george@landow.com

  Websites: www.landow.com

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