We get to explore a website from Webby for this assignment. I chose the category of Cultural Institutions -- as I scanned the nominees I noticed the International Quilt Study Center's name. I know that is a Nebraska institution, one I am familiar with, so I chose the International Quilt Study Center's Explorer website to explore.
The first thing I notice is that it takes time to load. But there are so many pictures and interactive features the slow load time is understandable. I also found it crashed on me when I tried to do my own pattern. However, the quilters I know could really get lost in this website.
It is a beautiful website and makes excellent use of their content (quilts) in an innovative and fun way. I wonder if such sophisticated and flexible searching could be used on digital collections such as Nebraska Memories or the Western Trails projects. I really like the interaction that is available -- such as the Threads section -- where you can explore the quilts that someone has grouped together, or create you own group. You can also explore various stories -- recordings made by visitors to the museum.
Although this is a visual medium you could perhaps apply it in general to a catalog. In both the Collection and Threads section you can browse or search in a variety of ways. You view records which include photographs but could just as easily be bibliographic records. The main drawback would be the size of the database you might need. This database is only 800 some quilts -- most libraries are much larger than that and would have many more records. I wonder how scalable this would be. But I love this site and will visit it again, to play around and be inspired.
