The recent article about the roughly 30 designations that are in play across the 391 units of the National Park System highlights just one of the disparities that exist among units. Another example is the uneven quality of the 391 units' websites.
While it's oft said that regardless of the designation all units of the National Park System supposedly are treated equally by the National Park Service, nothing could be farther from the truth, at least not when it comes to web content. And that's unfortunate, as the Internet is about the only place the National Park Service conducts anything resembling a marketing campaign.
To prove that point, let's compare the websites of Yellowstone National Park and Gauley River National Recreation Area.
Yellowstone just might have the best webmeisters in the Park Service, and a deep support crew in terms of public affairs, interpretation, and science staffs.
Go to Yellowstone's website and right off the bat the lefthand column offers you choices to Plan Your Visit, Photos and Multimedia, History and Culture, Nature and Science, For Teachers, For Kids, News, Management, and Support Your Park. In the body of the homepage there are more hot links to take you to Directions, Operating Hours and Seasons, Fees and Reservations, Road Construction Delays and SEASONAL Closures, Centennial Initiative 2016, Publications, What's New, and Webcams.
Move beyond that homepage and you can spend hours sifting through old and new photographs of the park; videocasts of the park; many chapters of Yellowstone's management history, with a bent toward winter-use; learn all about backcountry camping and how to obtain permits; fishing rules; campgrounds; education programs such as the well-received Expedition Yellowstone; lists of approved outfitters, including those that focus on photography; management debates over the park's northern range, and much, much more.
The website for Gauley River, sadly, pales greatly in comparison. Its lefthand column is modest, even Spartan, offering just Plan Your Visit, History and Culture, Nature and Science, and Management options. The body of the page contains hot links for Directions, Operating Hours and Seasons, Fees and Reservations, and Riparian Assessment.
There is no specific section for Photos and Multimedia, or News, and nothing For Teachers or For Kids, and no way to Support Your Park. Now, if you root around the website you'll find some content, such as more details on whitewater adventures on the Gauley, a nice page that, when updated, lets you figure out both water levels on the Gauley and when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans releases from the Summersville Dam for the fall 2009 rafting season. And there's a link to American Whitewater's Gauley River page, which offers ample information on the Gauley.
Sadly, the History and Culture page offers only a time-line of human occupation in the area and the evolution of the rafting industry. And while some park websites go into rich detail with birding lists, flower lists, and faunal information, Gauley River's Nature and Science page on its face is highly generic, though you can download pdfs addressing the recreation area's riparian areas.
Now, this is not intended to serve as a critique of the Gauley River staff. Rather, it's to point to the inequities that exist across a system that is not supposed to have such inequities. Understandably, larger parks with more acreage, more infrastructure and more tourism traffic are going to require more money and staff. But if you accept that the National Park Service's web presence is the agency's, and the 391 units', main form of getting the word out of the wonders that exist within the National Park System, you'd hope there would be equity across the system.
They say President Obama is highly cognizant of the powers of the Internet, Let's hope he expects his agency heads to be just as cognizant and that they order some much-needed work on the Park Service sites.
Comments
The really bad thing is that all the websites seem to look exactly the same and that even the Yellowstone website is not that good, at least not given the level of interest the park probably generates. The NPS should maybe consider revamping the entire website system.
By the way, do webmasters have to use the NPS CMS? Or would the webmaster of, say, Gauley River be free to set up an entirely different website or is he bound to use the NPS-administered CMS?
They way I understand it is that most of the webdesign is done through a central office in DC. Individual parks can do very little, and most of the changes they can make are in the photo&multimedia section.
Let's not forget that NPS website were completely redone in August 2006 (or 07). They've just undergone a massive, system-wide redesign and aren't likely to change anytime soon.
And if you think that park pages aren't equal, try checking out other sites...ie - http://www.nature.nps.gov/
Chris makes a good point. The NPS websites all look the same. Unfortunately, letting each park build their own site would lead to huge inequalities in website design...most of which often end of looking very amateurish. Not the message you want sent by a world-class organization. I believe there should be a certain level of design that ties all the NPS sites together while allowing each park to strut it's own park's stuff, if they are so inclined.
The size of the park isn't always a determinant as to how nice a particular park's website is. Remember, webmaster/web designer is often a collateral duty of someone who works at the office and it is up to the motivation of that individual as to how well the website is maintained and filled with content. I believe their should be a full-time person at the park or at the regional office who interacts with the interpretation and resource management staff. As I pointed out earlier, the web is THE most cost-effective way to reach people. One person, building a website, can reach thousands and tens of thousands of people. And, that reach isn't solely because the park is big or small. The search engines treat the NPS park sites as one collective whole...one giant website. So, any park that builds a website is automatically granted a very high ranking in regards to the keyword phrases that pertain to the particular park.
Each park used to have it's own separate website...the NPS referred to these as "Expanded website"...as in... "See the Expanded website of Crater Lake National Park for more information." However, I think this is all slowly being rolled up into the Content Management System, the NPS has set up. By the way, the NPS website, while boring, is fairly well designed...in a usability sense.
This all ties into the previous article on how many discrepancies there are in the parks. A website is no trivial thing. It's a symptom of how the NPS manages it's parks, in general.
Executive Director,
Crater Lake Institute
www.craterlakeinstitute.com
Robert Mutch Photography,
www.robmutch.com
The parks' websites were unified in mid to late 2006, if I remember correctly. Before that date only the main pages were the same in the whole system and each park could set up as many subpages on any topic they liked and could build with their own staff. Some parks still have the archived version of their former website online - and for example about Glacier National Park you will find much better information in the archive than on the current pages.
As far as I know, the new - or not so new anymore - websites were created in Harpers Ferry and the individual parks now can fill the given structure with their own content. But only in the given layout, site map structures and formats.
And @ Kurt: Gauley River NRA probably is a nice place. But it is obviously attractive only for six weeks in a year, for white water paddling only. At all other times there seems to be absolutely nothing interesting about it. It is a gorge without road access, that could be nice for hiking, but there are no decent signed trails, not even a picnic site. In 1996 a general management plan was approved, but it seems like it was never implemented. So I leave it to the readers of the Traveller if Gauley River NRA is worth national status and if much needed funds should be spend on its website. Finally: the wikipedia access statistic works as all of them work, with a counter in the server software. It is supposed to be reliable.
There aren't really webmasters for most NPS web servers, but yes there are strong constraints on how public-facing websites must look (both for branding & consistency and for accessibility laws), rules about links to non-NPS sites, etc..
To an extent, "on the web, nobody knows you're a dog" should allow small parks to have as fancy of web presences as large, rich parks. But small NPS units like Gauley River NRA or Fort Bowie NHS simply don't have staff available for generating their own websites. [Gauley River has no one in the NPS employee directory, which implies that the staff are listed under New River Gorge or other units or the region.] Fort Bowie has a ranger, a park guide, and a masonry worker (likely on a temporary assignment for a specific project). The 2 or 3 permanent staff cover the duties of superintendent, archeologist, maintenance man, resource manager, planning, interpretation, and everything else. They probably wouldn't have time to supervise a volunteer web developer even if one were to appear at their door. Further, until the past few years, most NPS units didn't have basic information like species lists. The initial priority is to make that information available to the superintendents and managers on the intranet.
One of several directions that NPS web content is going is the set of virtual learning centers:
http://www.nature.nps.gov/learningcenters/map.cfm
Most of these are multi-unit resources at the level of inventory & monitoring network. so a couple of people can provide content for multiple park units (or, less charitably, poor units can piggyback on large rich units). Most are just getting up and running, and few are linked from individual park websites yet. Yes, large, well-resourced units like Yellowstone have more interpretive staff, and thus larger and better virtual learning centers, but the learning centers pretty freely share ideas and code, so the result should be better web resources for all. Some are collaborations with non-NPS partners such as the Learning Center of the American Southwest,
http://dev.southwestlearning.org/index.php
As more information is gathered on each park, more will appear on the web, especially for natural resources.
The largest, most popular parks are much more highly favored not just by visitors or managers.
Park partners, especially "educational" partners, provide a great deal of funding to the larger parks with screaming resources that everyone wants to visit. The big sexy parks get more support, unfortunate but it's true, because it's awesome and cool to be associated with them.
Who paid for the production of Yellowstone's volumes of web content? You can bet one of the partner's did, and not the NPS. Who got all that content up on the website? Very possibly one of their hundred's of volunteers.
So, put aside the visitation arguments, the unification of branding arguments, etc. And let's look at a plain reality.
The smaller, less visited units of the NPS have much smaller staff, and fewer, if any, financial partners. Who is supposed to develop the web content? Who is supposed to pay for it? Web content must be on the bottom of the priority list for the managers of smaller, less visited units.
Seriously Kurt, I hope the motivation for this argument was to get a dialogue going, and not to criticize the big parks for taking advantage of the finances thrown their way, and the partners that are knocking down their doors. That's unfair, and unnecessary.
And PLEASE, I hope no one suggests that the NPS add more staff in Washington or their regional offices to accomplish a web-equity program; those offices are already way too top heavy with marginal visible effectiveness, or results that affect the visitor in a positive, tangible way.
It would be more useful for you to just put up a giant banner ad on this website that says VOLUNTEER AT YOUR LOCAL NATIONAL PARK, or CREATE FINANCIAL PARTNERSHIPS WITH YOUR FAVORITE PARK. Because we all know the sad truth that the federal government just won't pony up the dough to take care of all 391 units equitably.
And while you're at it Kurt, how about a moratorium on Traveler content concerned with the same 20 big parks, and maybe a new focus on the 100 or so smallest or least visited parks? That would be a more proactive solution to the inequity you give lip-service to.
Volunteerism and lip-service?
How's this for volunteerism -- The Traveler has been a volunteer effort for nearly four years now.
As for lip-service, perhaps you should take a glance through the "Browse Content By Date" search function. Here's a quick rundown of variety:
Let's see, in the past month there have been posts on Gateway NRA (1), Glacier (2), Grand Teton (3), the National Park Foundation's Junior Ranger Essay Contest, Everglades (4), Lake Clark NP and Preserve (5), Cape Lookout (6), the website situation, Navajo National Monument (7), Valley Forge (8), Voyageurs (9), Joshua Tree (10), Ocmulgee National Monument (11), Rock Creek Park 912), Shenandoah (13), Blue Ridge Parkway (14), Denali (15, Indiana Dunes (16), Cape Cod National Seashore (17), Mount Rainier (18), Zion (19), Bryce Canyon (20), the Waco mammoth site, Glen Canyon (21), Cedar Breaks (22) and Yosemite (23). We've also written about the massive lands bill that affected a handful of parks, including Pictured Rocks (24), Rocky Mountain (25), and Sequoia (26); the NPS ban on lead, and delisting of the gray wolf.
And we've also had stories that touched on Grand Canyon (27), the National Mall (28), the prospect of Mount St. Helens in the park system, Chiricahua National Monument (29), Arches (30), Acadia (31), Scotts Bluff NM (32), the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park (33), Jean Lafitte National Historical Park & Preserve (34), Fort Moultrie National Monument (35), Saguaro NP (36), Olympic (37), and Buffalo National River (38).
Less than one month, 38 different units mentioned, nearly one-tenth of the entire system. And look at the little guys sprinkled through there. C'mon, Anonymous, lip-service?
Tell you what, you write an article on any unit you'd like to and we'll consider posting it. That way you can be part of the volunteer effort.
How about NOT mentioning those 38 units again until after this site posts an article about, or at the very least mentions the remaining 358 units? (Or is my math incorrect because I blindly believe the NPS' designations and official count of units is good enough for most purposes?)
Since Yellowstone was a focus of the original article, I typed the term Yellowstone in Traveler's Search box. I received 90 pages of citations. 90 pages, or almost 900 individual posts to Traveler that either mention Yellowstone, or are devoted primarily to Yellowstone.
How can we expect the general public to care more about the smaller and less-funded parks, especially in arenas such as web content or funding, when we here at the Traveler, one of the best web blogs around, mention the big giant parks over and over again in the majority of articles? That's what I was getting at when I used the infuriating term "lip service". Are we really that concerned with an issue such as web content to discuss inequity of monetary resources across the agency?
What effect does inequity in web site content have on the majority of potential visitors? Probably not much. We live a pretty good life if we can devote the time and intellectual energy to argue back and forth about something such as this.
But I humbly suggest to our readers, if we can't get the information we're looking for through our laptops, perhaps we need to unplug and actually telephone the park and speak to a human, or even *gasp* write to them to request the information we're looking for.
(Consider that perhaps there just isn't that much at Gauley River except rafting and kayaking opportunities. Does a single use focus warrant endless pages of content or podcasts?)
I mentioned banners for volunteerism and partnerships as a way of fostering awareness and concern among our readers for those parks that don't receive the attention and support from the NPS managers we all agree they should.
It wasn't an attack on you personally, Kurt. You do an awesome job with the sight, I'm sure all readers would agree, and we're grateful for the considerable amount of time you devote to it.
When offering criticisms for something so miniscule as equity of web content across the entire agency, perhaps we should offer solutions, or better yet, actively solicit our readers to go volunteer their considerable services to those parks whose web content isn't up to snuff.
Because we all know that the only way this perceived deficiency is going to be rectified will be through private funding and volunteer man hours. The feds just don't have the scratch to make it happen. THAT was the point of my post.
Let me now add that IMHO I for one would rather see any monies and energy possibly devoted to a more equitable NPS web presence diverted towards the maintenance backlog. Or payroll to provide an increased employee presence for me, the visitor. Or for even greater preservation and conservation efforts. Or for aggressive stewardship outreach among minority communities. Or for converting NPS facilities to sustainable, responsible technologies. Or for getting folks that can't afford their own computers (and are more concerned about where their next meal is coming from) into these incredible parks, perhaps for the first time in their lives.