Desirable Scholarly Features

1. commented bibliography to stiffen the academic basis of the project, and to underline the point that the web is just a medium; that much important work is still published on paper and will continue to be so; but that there is no reason why a web-based presentation shouldn't parallel a book in seriousness and excede it in flexibility;
2. web publications in the bibliography with books/articles, but as a separate section: the point above may be underlined by making sure that as many bibliographical items as possible are web publications - we give their URLs as hotlinks, listed within the book or article section of the bibliography as appropriate; in other words, we put our money where our mouth is; at the same time, the quality of any links offered by contributors should be checked, since bad links (bad for whatever reason) might redound adversely on the project;
3. variety of experts: commission some texts by experts (preferably by some of those whose names appear in the bibliography), to underline the serious nature of the web as a medium for the communication of ideas;
4. photographs and transcriptions of documents: select appropriate documents from the NMM's collections, and always reproduce them as images together with an adjacent transcription and commentary on their importance: students may then learn to decipher handwriting from earlier centuries, and gain experience practising;
5. ships as documents: select appropriate paintings of ships in battle, and use them also as documents, perhaps in association with diagrams of the battle, and log-book and press reports of it; doing so will help reinforce the notion of artworks as documents;