Britain and the Sea:
Consultancy by Michael Greenhalgh
Michael.Greenhalgh@anu.edu.au
Australian National University and
Christ Church, Oxford UK

draft

Overview

In one respect, I think my suggested project aims go broader than you envisaged, because I have been conscious of the special and very focussed nature of the NMM, and the probably lack of maritime background of much of the target audience. I have provided a rationale for the suggested coverage, and listed the scholarly features I believe the project must contain if it is to be successful. Titles are tricky, and I think we need a descriptive one - longer than just Britain & the Sea, which doesn't mean very much on its own - to give leads to people, and to web search engines. Again, I have emphqasised the substantial difficulties that such an ambitious project is likely to encounter, and tried to suggest some ways of mitigating them.

For the design, I have suggested general approaches to the home page and table of contents, and will provide aa actual design for the Home Page (and, by extension, the suites underneath it) after our meeting in January, when we will see how many of by various recommendations are to be implemented. My design will be so simple I don't think it will even be called old-fashioned - for me such a design is indeed classic, and outside the rapidly changing whims/fashions of the web.

I have also changed my mind about having two completely separate suites of material, the one general, the other in-depth; I now argue that we need just one single suite, which will surely be easier to build, maintain, develop and expand into the Second Stage of the project.

For the essays, I have suggested topics and, in many cases, people who might write the essays (ahtough again I emphasise that I am not an expert in this area!); I have also provided some draft instructions for authors in simple language so as not to frighten the non-web-happy. Given that you intend to have something up-and-running by June 2001, I suggest that this might well be used to attract potential authors (which is always going to be the most tricky element in the project).

Because I am conscious that this is an important project, being a serious attempt to provide in-depth material via a multi-media vehicle, I have listed the extensions to simple text-and-image that might be frequently employed, and provided a mission statement / press release to brag about the expected achievement. Finally, I have made some miscellaneous additional suggestions that you might or might not wish to adopt.

Here are the same links in list format, ordered by filename:

  1. additional suggestions;
  2. instructions for authors;
  3. rationale for suggested project coverage;
  4. likely difficulties of the project;
  5. suggested essay topics;
  6. extensions to text-and-image;
  7. this page;
  8. mission statement / press release;
  9. overview of suggested project aims;
  10. desirable scholarly features;
  11. introductory or specialised? or just one folding suite of pages?;
  12. some possible title variations;
  13. table of contents and design for home page;