Bravo! What a wonderful concept - I think this is very similar to features like
"AOL Keyword: ...."
I did spot one tiny flaw. Page numbers are tied to not only content, but also
language:
Exhibition information in English: Page 15
Exhibition information in Hebrew: Page 2
Exhibition information in Arabic: Page 26
So if I am looking at the Exhibition information in Hebrew, but would be more
comfortable seeing that information in Arabic, there isn't an easy way to
toggle between languages. If I change the language in the main navigation, I
get routed back to the main page.
As an end-user, I'd like to see all content tied to one number regardless of
language, and then underneath your jump-to box, toggles for "See this page
in...". If I'm viewing content in English, I can change the page number and the
system would know to pass the language variable with the request.
Hope that makes sense.
Chad M Petrovay
Collections Database Administrator
The Walters Art Museum
600 North Charles Street
Baltimore, MD? 21210
P: 410.547.9000 x266
F: 410.837.4846
cpetrovay at thewalters.org
?
www.thewalters.org
?
Exhibitions:
Bedazzled: 5,000 Years of Jewelry?on view through January 4, 2009
Mummified on view through November 8, 2009
The Special Dead: A Medieval Reliquary Revealed?on view through January 18, 2009
-----Original Message-----
From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
Hanan Cohen
Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 3:04 AM
To: mcn-l at mcn.edu
Subject: [MCN-L] Go to page number
Shalom,
Since this is my first post to this list I will introduce myself.
My name is Hanan Cohen and I am the new Webmaster of the Bloomfield
Science Museum Jerusalem, Israel. http://www.mada.org.il/en/ . I am
"new" in the sense that I have been a short time on this job and also in
the sense that I am new to museums as a professional.
One of the issues I have been thinking about since starting here is how
to connect the physical world to the web. We know there is a problem of
directing people from paper to web and also from speech to web. At the
most, we direct people to a top directory and they somehow manage from
there.
The Bloomfield Science Museum strives to be an educational resource for
its visitors - the general public and the formal education system.
Writing long URL's on paper in order to propose content on our site to
our audience is a problem.
Then I had an idea.
Every page on our site has a unique, short ID.
I have created a new box that is displayed on every page.
The box says "go to page number:", has an input line and below that
"current page number: wxyz"
When I want to direct someone to a page, all I have to do is see in what
page number I am at and write or say a short number.
The recipient just has to type a short number and go directly to the
intended page. No need to type a long URL or click through menus.
Now, we at the museum, will have to learn how to use this feature in our
publications, displays and daily use of the website. It's a whole new
way of thinking which we will have to develop. I hope the new feature
will really solve the problem it tackles.
I would be grateful for any feedback on this solution and its
implementation.
Currently, there isn't much English content on the site. To get a better
experience of the page number idea, I suggest visiting the "Exhibitions"
section.
Thanks,
Hanan Cohen - Webmaster
Bloomfield Science Museum Jerusalem
http://www.mada.org.il
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