review of a museum website

I visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum at http://www.ushmm.org. The first thing I noticed was that the museum had a section on the right hand side to view the site in a different language. They have over ten different languages that you can view the site in. They have links across the top and on the right side that you can click on to go to things such as education, research, history, and support. They also have a search bar at the top of the page for quick searches on their site. Their mission was very easy to find under the “museum” tab. It states,”The Museum’s primary mission is to advance and disseminate knowledge about this unprecedented tragedy; to preserve the memory of those who suffered; and to encourage its visitors to reflect upon the moral and spiritual questions raised by the events of the Holocaust as well as their own responsibilities as citizens of a democracy.” The website is extremely user friendly and isn’t too cluttered. It gives people a very good idea of what the museum has without taking away what an actual real life visit to the museum would be like. They have 13 subjects of online exhibitions that you can look at including children and the U.S. The website contribute to the mission because it is extremely educational without being a physical visit to the museum. The website talks about the history behind the Holocaust and clearly defines what genocide is. College graduates can also do fellowships, internships, and research at the museum which I found very interesting. The website also has a behind the scenes for staff and shows what the curator does for the museum and how much work the museum took to create and still takes to run. There are many videos and photographs for many different things. One could spend hours looking at all of their online collections and I can’t even imagine going to the actual museum. I feel like the website isn’t as dramatic or as powerful as the physical museum would be but I realize that it is very hard to portray something so powerful on the screen of a computer. I think that this is a very good and well organized website.