Wikipedia Presence[]
The New York City Fire Museum has its own Wikipedia page (New York City Fire Museum↑). Before I added to it, it consisted of three sentences describing the museum's building and purpose, as well as a photograph of the exterior of the museum. I then added a "History" section and a "Permanent exhibitions" section with photos. The museum could do a lot more to expand on the Wikipedia page. More could be added about the history of the museum and on the permanent exhibitions.
Personalization[]
As of now, the New York City Fire Museum's website does not allow for any personalization. If they allowed for individual users to log in, individual profiles could be customized to each user's preferences. Users could potentially bookmark items in the collection that they are particularly interested in. Maybe a forum could be added so visitors would be able to ask questions or make suggestions.
Also, it appears that fire education is a big part of the institution's purpose. There is an activity guide available for download for teachers. Classes are also able to come to the museum for fire safety demonstrations. Perhaps items that were to be used in demonstrations or exhibits could be bookmarked for teachers so they could prepare for the lesson.
Website Development[]
The website of the New York City Fire Museum has evolved in many ways since it first went live in 2000.
2000[]
The New York City Fire Museum's website first made an appearance in 2000.
2000
The homepage was extremely basic, but tidy and easy to use.
2001[]
After 9/11, a front page was added to include links to information about the
2001
attacks, a link to a page full of condolences sent to the museum, a link to donate, and a link to proceed to the museum's homepage. This front page remained for about a year.
2002[]
In late 2002, the homepage was changed to a graphic with links to all of the
2002
museum's pages, including a permanent September 11th Memorial Page. I liked this homepage the best. It is very clean and does not have a lot of text. It clearly displays the links to the website's other pages. And it looks nice!
2004[]
The end of 2004 shows another change in the design of the hompage. This
2004
time it has a navigation bar under a static banner listing all of the site's pages. Below that is a lot more text than before. There is a brief description of the museum, followed by sections on Featured Collections, Museum Gift Shop, and Rentals and Parties. Everything is still relatively clear, but I personally do not like homepages to be so cluttered. This site design remained in use until 2012.
2012[]
The newest version of the website was launched on May 1, 2012. The homepage has
Today
the same general layout as the previous incarnation, but the design is slightly different and more modern looking. The blocks of information are a bit cleaner stylistically, but it's still a lot of text.