The judges said:
Playful. Compelling. Beautiful Design. Fun. Great Content. These are just some of the accolades accorded the Brooklyn Children's Museum's "Collection Central Online." What fun it is, and how easy it is, to find an object, maybe even hear the sound it makes, zoom in and around it, and even make your own inspired drawing for submission to a public online collection. The search tools are easy to use for both children and adults and the choice of objects presented, individually and when grouped, seems exceptionally well thought out. The ease with which relationships among objects can be explored will really get kids discovering, thinking and learning. The Brooklyn Children's Museum should be applauded for taking on the challenge of creating a web site for kids and their parents that presents rich information in a way that is engaging and fun, and bridges the in-museum and out-of-museum experience. It will be exciting to see how the site evolves in the years ahead but museums of all kinds and audiences can already take lessons from "Collection Central Online."
The producers said:
Providing access to the collection for our core audience—children, families, and teachers—was a driving purpose, along with effective collections management,
behind the effort to digitize the collection of Brooklyn Children's Museum (founded in 1899) that began in 1997. The challenge in designing Collections
Central Online was to create a "kid-friendly" web interface and architecture using our collections management software, The Museum System and its
web complement, eMuseum. We wanted the site to be fun and attractive to, as well as educational for, young people. We did consecutive tests with children,
using The Museum System itself and then paper prototypes to interview children in groups and individually and to observe their responses. We then did beta
testing with a small sample of teachers, parents, and kids. This research, informal as it was, made key contributions and we believe it is an essential
tool in the development of web resources for this audience. New records are being added regularly to the site; in June we will add natural science specimens.
Eventually, the site will give access to virtually all of the Museum's 30,000-strong collection of worldwide cultural artifacts and science specimens.
The judges said:
Ohio Memory creates a prismatic view of Ohio's diverse and historic communities from a mélange of over 26,000 contributions from more than 300 organizations. By allowing visitors see life in Ohio by special interest, geographic locale, or through the eyes of special guests and other community members, regional treasures are discovered, relationships with history and place emerge, and new personal perspectives can be shared. This is a good representation of a special genre of website that helps stir pride in community and fun in its discovery. The technology employed by this site is straightforward and put to good use, including many high quality images with zoom capabilities and the ability for visitors to view, create, and share personal scrapbooks. The Learning Resources section, which will see continued development, gives a glimpse of the great promise its future holds. Visitors from anywhere are likely to end up poking around this site for far longer than they would expect, and they are also likely to ask, "Does my community have anything like this?" If not, the next question is, "Why not?"
The producers said:
The Ohio Historical Society (OHS) created Ohio Memory to celebrate the state's bicentennial in 2003, and 330 museums, historical societies, libraries, and special
archives contributed materials for the online database. Ohio Memory includes more than 26,000 images of photographs, documents, artifacts, and natural history
specimens relating to Ohio's history. Geared towards a broad audience, the site is an effort to make Ohio's historical treasures widely accessible in digital
form. In addition to the search and browse functions, users can create their own "scrapbooks," test their knowledge of Ohio history with the
Governor's Challenge, send an e-mail postcard, and view exhibits on topics ranging from Frontier Ohio to the Civil Rights Movement.
One of the strengths of Ohio Memory is the collaborative nature of the project. While standards for digitization and metadata were established, working with
330 institutions involved many compromises. Contributing institutions could digitize items or send them to OHS for scanning, and staff worked closely to ensure
partners had input in the development of their entries and the site as a whole. A partnership with OhioLINK, a consortium of Ohio's college and university
libraries and the State Library of Ohio, provided server space, software, and technical support.
The judges said:
The North Carolina Museum of Art's ArtNC web site demonstrates a real focus on encouraging teachers to incorporate art from their collection into a variety of core curriculum areas. It does this by helping them easily find the appropriate objects and images along with lesson plans, additional museum resources, a "Teachers Lounge" and related topics they might like to explore. Particularly impressive is the ease with which teachers (or others) can simply choose their grade, topic area, and/or region in order to find relevant material. Once there, teachers can ask questions online, which can be answered by both museum staff and other teachers, and this information is posted for all to see...a terrific way of building a really relevant knowledge and idea bank about how the collection may be used. The quality of the images which are provided are also superb. This site presents one excellent take-off point for how a museum can directly address the needs of teachers in meaningful ways. It will prove a real "site to watch" as it continues to grow and evolve.
The producers said:
ArtNC provides K-12 teachers with a quick and easy way of using works from the North Carolina Museum of Art in the classroom. Artworks from the collection,
lesson plans, and program listings are organized into categories—subject-area, grade level, and geographic region—that are recognizable and relevant to
teachers. Search results provide information and images of desired artworks, link to related curriculum materials, reference related Museum programs,
and allow the user to pose questions about these items.
The site provides teachers with high-quality images of artworks to use in the classroom, a function that many teacher-focused sites do not offer. ArtNC works of
art can be printed 8 ½ by 11" or displayed large scale with a digital projector. This capability encourages close observation and helps create a
gallery-like experience. Curricula model ways of teaching students to look closely and make connections between art and the world around them.
We built ArtNC with a view toward the future. By simply changing the interface, we can transform the database for other audiences, such as families or the general
public. The site also has the capability to grow, adapt to our users' needs, and respond to changing information about collection works.
Silver: Collections Central Online
Bronze: Ohio Memory
Honorable Mention: ArtNC