Review of the British Museum Website

The British Museum’s online site fulfills two important missions for the Museum; first, to encourage the general public to visit the actual Museum location in London and secondly, to provide an avenue for learning and research. Overall, the website is a complete success; the funds and effort involved with a site such as this are impressive.

At first glance, the home page is ascetically pleasing; the Museum’s color themes of black and white are accented by light blue tones. The result is classic without being too bland. The main page provides all the essentials for a visit to the British Museum. Visiting hours, entrance fees (none- the Museum is free), and special exhibitions are prominently displayed. Currently, the Museum is promoting a showcase of the terracotta soldiers from China. To grab the online viewer’s attention and for those of us unable to visit the Museum, the page also offers an “Explore” feature with its most popular items, a mystery object, and a link to the Museum’s online slideshow tours. Devoid of advertising throughout the entire site, the home page does offer a link to online museum shopping (anyone want a replica faïence hippo?) as well as children’s activities.

For such a massive museum in real-life (I spent three days there and still didn’t see every gallery), the website is extremely well-organized and showcases the things “not to be missed” in the Museum’s extensive collection. The Museum itself is very visitor-friendly and easy to navigate, and this aspect translates well to the website. The Visiting tab on the navigation toolbar is the most useful link for the average Museum patron. This page provides additional information for potential visitors- directions, on-location tour information, and the floor plan for the entirety of the British Museum. The floor plan is especially helpful because it provides a layout of this three level, multi-roomed building and links to each gallery with a brief description of the room in addition to the most popular artifacts on display there.

With the Museum’s enormous collection both on and off display, the website incorporates the most popular objects on display. For the visitor with limited time, the Explore tab provides the top items in a variety of categories. The online viewer can narrow by location, department, time period, popularity, or even what an artifact is made out of. Helpful to determine what the Museum has to offer, this function also enables a potential visitor to plan a visit.

Finally, since many visitors to the British Museum are children (thankfully they’re too short to block the view of the Rosetta Stone), the website offers links to children’s activities and for the teachers, there are learning opportunities incorporating the Museum. The page for family and children’s activities is readily accessible from the home page or Visiting page. It presents a listing of children’s events at the Museum, downloadable coloring pages, a daily children’s question answered by a Museum curator, and streaming media. Today, children could watch a Chinese New Year dragon dance in the main entryway of the Museum. This web page provides helpful hints for making a trip to the Museum enjoyable for both children and their parents; there are a great number of services available on location, from children’s Museum trails to free coloring books & crayons. The British Museum also encourages children to visit for school trips. The Learning feature provides educators multiple options for incorporating a Museum trip into the lesson plan. The page provides .pdf versions of lessons applicable before a visit in addition to award-winning Ancient Civilization websites which incorporate flash media and downloadable resources. The online section also includes information on actual sessions taught at the Museum if the school trip isn’t only for touring the British Museum. Easy to navigate and informative, the Learning option is divided into primary and secondary education levels.

Learning is not limited to just children on the British Museum’s website. The British Museum presents research opportunities to the general public as well. Available at the top corner of every page, the Museum’s search engine allows the viewer to search over 4000 selected items in the museum collection. It provides object search results and relevant related items, articles, and any online tours incorporating the subject matter. Though you cannot search the entire collection, the search function allows a potential researcher to evaluate what the Museum has to offer and how best to expand a search. Each item in the search catalogue has a high-resolution image, brief description, catalogue number, and location. This search feature is essential for background preparation before any research visit to the Museum. The Research feature on the website allows a researcher to make appointments to view any object in department study rooms or view rare or limited access publications in the Museum’s two research libraries. You can even make an appointment for a keeper to identify a personal archaeological treasure. Each department’s web page follows the exact same format so it is easy to learn about departmental research projects, contact information for keepers and curators (they actually do reply to their emails!), gallery information, and web resources- basically the best websites associated with a department. In addition, the Museum has its entire two-dimensional collection digitalized to search and a database of recent archaeological finds brought to the Museum for identification.

The research capabilities of the British Museum website enabled me to properly prepare for my research opportunity at the British Museum. I was able to contact department keepers to arrange the use of study rooms, search out items on permanent display, as well as simply finding out the pertinent background information necessary to successful utilize a museum of this size. A visit to London is not complete without a stop at the British Museum but if you are not traveling across the pond anytime soon, the British Museum website is not to be missed.