Review of the National Museum of the American Indian

The National Museum of the American Indian is one of the many museum websites created by the Smithsonian Institution. This website is good because it only focus is not on the museum itself. Under the outreach section on the toolbar a reader of this website can learn about the many different programs offered by the museum. For example, the museum provides internships and work opportunities, not just in the American Indian museums in New York and Washington D.C, but the website also provides information and applications regarding training and obtaining a job in a more local museum or cultural center owned and/or operated by Native communities. Additionally, in this section website readers can also learn about how to submit their own pieces of work so that Native American artists and their communities can become connected to the National Museum of the American Indian as well as other museums, organizations, and professionals. However, by contrast, with this section so detailed about who were past participants and how to apply for these types of programs, it does not prepare the viewer for the lack of detail presented in the rest of the website.

The National Museum of the American Indian portrays itself as a user friendly, scholarly website, although many items which could make this website much better are missing, such as, more use of new media and a better website presentation of the museum exhibits. The positives aspects of this website include its clear toolbar, its organizational design and its understandable content. However, the presentation of the exhibits needs more detail. Looking at a website one should not learn everything about an exhibit, instead, one should be lured into wanting to see it in person, but this site only provides the observer with a short description and one or two pictures from the collection. The lack of content regarding exhibits does not incline the observer to want to visit the museum and see more; instead, it one must go to the museum in order to learn anything. I feel the guiding principal of a museum website should make the observer want to go to the museum not force them to go to the museum to learn anything about this topic, and therefore, I am not sure if the scholarship of this website is completely thought through.

Additionally, content wise, under "Visitor Information" on the main toolbar there is a link to "Inside the Museum" where the exhibits are described in a paragraph or two, similar to the descriptions one finds if s/he clicks on the "Exhibits" link on the main toolbar. Within these two pages, however, descriptions of the same exhibits are written differently. For most of the exhibits more detail is found under the "Inside the Museum" link, which is the harder link to find. Additionally, under this semi-hidden link are descriptions of the museum’s theaters, resource centers and stores which are described nowhere else on the website. Therefore, while this website seems easy to navigate because it is easy to find the exhibition page, the better exhibition descriptions are actually harder to find.

Another example of this website’s lack of usability is apparent through this observer's discovery of the National Museum of the American Indian Cultural Resource Center. This observer had never heard of it and wanted to learn more, but had trouble because there is no information or pictures displayed on this website on the research collection within this museum. Secondly, there is little content and use of media within this website. So, the observer can probably read almost every word on the website within an hour. Therefore, this website could foster better scholarship by being more interesting, so that the observer is lured into going to the actual museum, instead of forced to for more information. This is said because the only truly beneficial item on this website is the outreach section which one would not find easily at the museum itself, and this is probably not useful for any audience of this website who is not of American Indian decent.