Chicago History Museum Web Review

Chicago History Museum (http://www.chicagohistory.org/) Created and maintained by the Chicago History Museum, Chicago, IL. Reviewed February 8-9, 2008.

The Chicago History Museum website’s audience will be potential museum visitors, teachers, students, and researchers. The site provides information about the museum- though not a lot about the individual artifacts in its collection-useful materials for teachers, homework resources for students, and a catalog of its manuscripts, photographs, and books and other online resources for researchers.

The website has both good and bad aspects of usability. On the positive side, there is a Spanish language option which makes it more accessible and most of the information that a visitor would expect on a museum site can be accessed from the homepage. On the negative side, every time the user goes from page to page on the main site a message pops up asking the user to run an add-on from the site; though it is not clear what the purpose of this add on is. Also, the search function on the site is not useful for finding information and the site is lacking a sitemap which can make navigation easier. One of the online projects requires Quicktime, so this project is not accessible to those who do not have it or want to download it. Many of the links opened in a new window which can be good so the user does not have to keep clicking back to return to a page, but it can also be an overwhelming amount of windows open at one time.

The exhibits section provides a brief description of the permanent, current, and upcoming exhibits at the museum though it does not include images and descriptions of the individual artifacts. The site does not include online exhibits in this section. The collections section also gives a brief description of the different areas of the collection though it is not searchable online. This section provides a limited amount of specific information about the museum’s artifact collection to potential researchers. The easiest way to search on the site is by using the Encyclopedia of Chicago. The entries are written by scholars from universities (though it is not clear if they are students or professors), newspaper contributors, writers from the CHM and the Newberry Library, and freelance writers. The contributors and their institutions are listed on the site. The encyclopedia also includes maps, historical sources, and special features that include interactive interpretations. The new media of the web allows the users to search the Encyclopedia of Chicago more easily and it lets the Encyclopedia include interactive maps and photos, and links to other related materials which enhance the entries.

The research section includes an online catalog and online resources such as links to other research sites and to online projects, which are collaborations between the museum and Northwestern University that use the museum’s collection. These online projects highlight the artifacts held on specific topics better than the collection and exhibition sections do.

The education section will be useful for teachers because it includes information about field trips and lesson plans. The classroom materials are for grades 3-12 and were developed and used by local school teachers. The materials include online and downloadable lessons about a variety of topics in Chicago and American history. There are also homework resources for students. The kids and family section provides information about children’s exhibits at the museum, online games, and fun facts.

The presentation of the website is consistent on the main pages with the logo and the color blue. The site does not use moving images or many images at all. On some of the projects that are collaborations with other institutions, the setup of the page is different and the CHM logo is not there. The Chicago History Museum was formerly the Chicago Historical Society and some of the pages still include the CHS logo. The online projects and the Encyclopedia of Chicago (2005) are not updated. On the homepage the upcoming events section is updated and “Chicago History Minute” which features this day/month in history changes daily. The site does have links that connect its sections although some of the links on the kids & families page connect to the same page which is unnecessary.

The CHM site uses the new media of the web to enhance the Encyclopedia of Chicago with searchable, interactive, and linking features. Researchers can also search the site in order to get a better idea of what the museum has before going to the museum research center. The web also allows the CHM to collaborate with other institutions in projects such as the Haymarket Affair digital collection which presents and makes searchable the museum’s holdings concerning the Haymarket Affair.

The Chicago History Museum website provides many research and education resources. The site could be improved by adding a sitemap for easier navigation, by providing more information about the exhibits and individual artifacts, and making the artifact collection searchable by keyword or name.