National Maritime Museum

As the homepage proudly declares, this is really three museums in one - and the website certainly boasts enough content for three museums. As well as the maritime elements, the Royal Observatory and the Queen's house are well represented. The history of the Queen's house and its inhabitants are described, along with images of the royalty closely associated with it. Timelines and biographies further illustrate the history of the royal family and, as with the royal palaces site discussed in Chapter 5, the family themselves are covered more thoroughly than the property.

There are extensive picture resources, plus a large education and children's area to go with the more mundane maps, visiting instructions and the like. Navigation can appear confusing, due largely to the plethora of choices available, but drop-down menus, hotlinks and navigation arrows actually all move the viewer smoothly through the pages. It can be slightly difficult to find exactly what you are looking for because the majority of the links take you to the more academic areas of the site, notably the massive library and picture collections.

The kid's area is full of maritime fun for the younger ship lover. It contains instructions for making telescopes and masks as well as quizzes, wordsearches and other fun stuff. Included in the adults' and children's section are a series of fact files, covering such disparate subjects as Steam Power and the Tudor Monarchy as well as providing useful commentary on the main displays. These would be useful for young students (say, under-16s) who are writing projects.

SPECIAL FEATURES

PORT Online Search Facility Within the Centre for Maritime Research there are a large number of links to various educational resources, by far the most significant of which is PORT. It is an engine that searches maritime internet resources, so the potential range of information is massive. The search is quick and the results are pertinent, so the museum is to be commended for providing online access to this resource. This facility is complemented by exhaustive research notes and bibliographies, which are broken down into themes and chronologies. The academic rigour is maintained by the regular production of the electronic Journal of Naval History.