The Smithsonian Institution's museum dedicated to black history and culture, National Museum of African American History and Culture launched last month with an interactive website, "
The Memory Book" - long before its building opens.
Blogging technology allow visitors to help produce content for future exhibits at the museum, with long essays, short vignettes of memories or recorded oral histories.
According to Lonnie Bunch, the museum's founding director, museum staff monitor the site for historical accuracy, and technical filters apparently block racist or inappropriate comments. Bunch regards the site as a "virtual museum" and a new source of research for curators and scholars.
Apart from the interesting use of social-networking technologies, I was intrigued by the navigation system: the first time I have ever seen an interactive 'link-web' diagram used as a navigation device throughout a website:
It's one of those applications of web technology that I classify as "Cool, but not very practical".
More information: Memory Book OverviewSydney Morning Herald article
The Web is a bit like an art museum: an amazingly rich resource which is too easily squandered. I have just posted an article on my website (originally presented as a paper at the Ark Group Information Architecture Forum, and at Oz-IA 2009), which introduces principles and techniques used in art museum education and shows how they can be applied in web construction, writing and design. It offers insights into:
