Have you seen the National Park Service's new web portal? The redesigned site is cleaner and easier to navigate than the older version.
The upper third of the homepage features a rotating series of gorgeous photographs to whet your appetite for exploring the various nooks and crannies of the National Park System. Alongside this slide show is a box containing "Search" and "Find A Park" functions, while just below this panel you'll find columns containing news items from around the park system, as well as a calendar of events. The bottom third of the page offers multimedia offerings, from videocasts and podcasts to web cams and photo galleries.
All in all it's a nice, clean upgrade from the old monster. But there are a couple of questionable items. For instance, instead of placing a link to "Working with Communities" right under the slide show, why not one to provide folks with information on the various park passes they can buy and where they can buy them? Also, the slide show runs a tad too fast for my taste. Makes it tricky to enjoy the photo and then read the caption before the shot dissolves into the next image.
And while it's probably too soon to tell since this site just debuted, hopefully the Park Service will provide an archive of its multimedia productions for visitors to browse through.
Just as, if not more, important is the need to see this redesign trickle down through the many websites of the National Park System. Not only is a cleaner, more easily navigable collection of sites needed, but there are somewhat questionable, if not embarrassing, aspects to the current collection.
For instance, one of the pages for the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park website offers this curious tidbit:
Don Redman, "the little giant of Jazz," graduated from Storer College in 1920. Until his death in 1964, Redman continued to have a profound influence on the evolution, direction and development of this uniquely American art form.
Couldn't that be better filed with the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park?
Over at the site for Fords Theater National Historic Site you'll find prominent mention of recently made "major renovations," but no details on them.
And while Padre Island National Seashore saw a leatherback sea turtle come ashore to nest last year, the seashore's website states that "leatherback sea turtles are not known to nest currently on Padre Island."
Surf over to the pages for the Fort Bowie National Historic Site in Arizona and you'll find the following bit of national park trivia: Last winter, the coldest temperature inside the Alpine Visitor Center was 21.2 degrees. The snow insulates the building when it is closed for the winter.
Unfortunately, the Alpine Visitor Center can be found not in Arizona but at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.
And unless you're an astute student of American history, you'll likely be wondering what war was raging in the spring of 1814 when "General Andrew Jackson and an army of 3,300 men attacked 1,000 Upper Creek warriors on the Tallapoosa River." The answer does not seem to exist on the Horseshoe Bend National Military Park website.
There are other examples, but the point has been made. And what should not be overlooked, either, is that, overall, the NPS websites collectively harbor an incredibly rich collection of information in a variety of presentations. But sometimes it's not always easy to find nor, as evidenced above, properly filed away.
Hopefully the redesign of the Mothership will filter down to the troops.
Comments
Neat and very well done for all park visitors. While I'm not a fan of flash-sites (limited access for search engines and so on), the large slide show on the front page looks great. I miss a drop down list with direct access to the parks, though. That one would be nice even if it's usually not the method of choice for almost 400 parks.
And it is wonderful that lots of in-depth information has been collected, sorted and linked through a decent structure. A wealth of information is buried in the NPS servers, and some of it could only be found by accident. Now most of it is listed and much better accessible. I miss the peoples directory so far, but it is probably linked somewhere too and I have to browse a bit more (and I have it bookmarked anyway).
As the NPS begins to increase its reliance on web-based methods of electronic communication and public outreach, so should it invest in frequent auditing and updating of posted information. For example, sometimes I've found more complete, accurate and updated information for specific park units on Wikipedia.com or on websites maintained by non-profit organizations, than on nps.gov.
It's one thing to initiate a new structure and feel to an old web site that function's as the Agency's front page. It's quite another thing to audit, correct, and update accurate information for each park unit. I wonder what effort is being put into www.nps.gov to ensure ease of use and accuracy of posted information at the level of individual park units?
Owen Hoffman
Oak Ridge, TN 37830
I have to comment about this. I am a long time Parks enthusiast and plan vacations around visiting various parks. My biggest pet peeve with the NPS website is that their maps (like on the individual state maps) only list the various park locations and not actual cities. So someone like me who is willing to fly to a centrally located airport and then do some driving to see the sites, has to take the info from the NPS website and then put it into Google maps or Map-point.
Side note: I am a fairly regular reader of this site and enjoy the discussions immensely. I have hesitated to post in the past because I am not a professional in any field even mildly associated with National Parks and sometimes feel the discussion is too technical for me to add any value. However, in THIS topic, I am the right kind of person to comment. Someone who uses the nps.gov site on a regular basis to plan visits to parks.
Janet: I agree that the regional maps the NPS provides for individual parks often leave much to be desired. (This is a polite way of saying that many of the regional are nearly useless.) But if you just need to identify the nearest commercial airport to use for a fly-drive visit to a particular park, there's a way to get around the inadequate map problem. If you visit the home page of the park you are interested in, then click on "Directions," you will usually get directions that include airport information. For example, if you visit the Arches national Park and click on directions, you will get this:
And if you visit the corresponding site for Grand Teton National Park, you will get this:
I hope this helps, Janet. And please, please, don't be reluctant to comment! Take it from me; you've got the right stuff.
Bob - You'll be sorry you encouraged me! Ok, look at the Directions for Assateague Island. The website says the closest airports are Ocean City Municipal Airport and Salisbury-Wicomico County Regional Airport. Come on! OK, some commerical airlines probably go to these airports but I went into BWI, went to Assateague for a couple of days, saw a few battlefields near Baltimore, toured Clara Barton's house and rode the carousel at Glen Echo. I highly enjoyed my trip and did use the NPS website but it was a challenge. I think the website is a reflection of the conflict of the park service (what I perceive as a frequent user). "We acknowledge that we have to have users/visitors but hate that they might ask silly questions, want to go to the bathroom or not want to camp out for a week. We need the visitors to pay fees, buy maps/books, drop money in the collection boxes, and be fans to convince their Congressperson to give us money but we hate idea that they actually might visit."
I visited the new website with images turned off in the browser, which is my normal web-mode. Although my status as an endangered dial-up surfer is now (finally!) about to go the way of the dinosaurs, bandwidth usage will continue to be important for those who want to use the Internet heavily ... by downloading out-of-copyright Google books, maps & GIS data, share photo collections, etc. Ballooning websites with automatic slide-shows and animated Flash files (I didn't like Punch the Monkey, and I still want the page to stay still until I choose to watch it 'perform') exacerbate this old issue that hasn't gone away and isn't going to (on the contrary!), fiber optics or no.
Without graphics and on an older browser, the new homepage is structurally intact and functionally clear & inviting. That's a kudo, and it didn't happen by accident.
I understand that there are some who would reduce rather than increase the role & influence of local communities adjoining our Parks. However, this is a trend (making nice with communities) that has been visible and gaining momentum for quite a few years now. By putting the "Working With Communities" link in the center of the main menu-bar (the most noticeable 'real estate' on the whole page), NPS is plainly signaling an historic commitment; that local people matter and they will have growing rather than lesser roles.
Incidentally, I had turned images back on in order to see the Captcha for this comment, and then re-visited the Communities page ... and it has only a small header-image and no other gratuitous page-graphics: it loaded quickly. This is good news, and plays to the fact that when I saw this article about their new website, I immediately thought to myself, "I've probably never actually visited the NPS homepage, have I?". Instead, I search the web for my subject of interest - whether in Gates of the Arctic or at Cape Hatteras - and then use the returned link to go directly to the NPS site page (or other) that appears to contain the desired information. I have never searched for Parks etc, within the NPS site (if you want only to see pages from within the NPS site, include the term "nps.gov", with the quotes, in your search-phrase).
The variability that is so evident among different parts of the NPS site - between the different Park units - is a reflection of the use of different local-unit individuals to do the web-work for each unit, independently. For example, I know the guy who does much, most or all of the web-work for Olympic. He does a nice job, and probably enjoys at least some parts of it ... but his "dream job" was not to stand behind the counter in the trailer that is the WIC (Wilderness Information Center) office playing with the computer and re-answering the same questions endlessly (all of which he has posted on the website...). His status as a web-worker or IT professional is strictly incidental. Not that one needs to be pro/trained to do good work, but in no way did he chose an NPS career-path, to end up doing this work: he's a wilderness aficionado, a trail-bum, not an office-ape & keyboard-monkey.
Because an (ideal) NPS website deals with lots of material that is non-standardized, unpredictable, poorly classifiable, subject to changing public & government expectation (whim), etc, etc, the attempt (and it will always remain just that) to make one unified website for all of it stands as an excellent example of the most challenging - and interesting/valuable - kind of website.
www.Microsoft.com is a rather easy design project, compared to what NPS is up against. The nature & content of Bill's (former) site are fully define & controlled. All the activities & goals under that domain are specified & directed. Not so at NPS ... nor on the website that you & I would like to someday design & create. 'Real life', 'organic' websites are the highest challenge on the Web, and that's why NPS.gov can look a bit ragged at times. If the messiness & irregularity are suppressed, the value of the site overall will diminish. Balladeers have written songs about this ... Hollywood has made movies.
Janet ... if you ever get a yen for Wrangell-St Elias, there is a tucked-away set of pages & guidance-files for sensational backcountry hikes & routes (not always a trail..) that is the stuff of dreams. And the flight-plan for a visit is so simple you will guess it without checking any sources. ;-)