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
For the most part, NPS Web content is principally driven by 1) a dedicated/interested
NPS employee (and in a few cases, employees, plural) and/or 2) a dedicated/interested
volunteer. This is pretty much consistent whether the park be large or small, old or
new. In many cases existing Web content was created by that NPS employee and/or
volunteer, who is no longer associated with a given park and additions to Web
content then grinds to a halt.
Compounding that problem is a general lack of apprecation on the part of many
NPS managers to expend resources to expand parks' Web offerings. THE primary
focus is the park visitor who walks into the front door of the visitor center
or entrance station and 'electronic visitors' don't count. That tends to
discourage dedicated/interested NPS employees (and volunteers) from devoting
more time to expanding a park's Web site.
A case in point is the NPS History Web site (http://www.nps.gov/history/history).
The electronic library (3,000+ documents online) is principally (though not
solely) the work of one NPS employee and one volunteer; the only funding
Management has provided is the salary of that one NPS employee.
The old Expanded Web sites (mentioned previously) was an example of pre-CMS Web
development efforts, most of which were done by people no longer associated
with those parks, with no one left (or who has time) to migrate that content
into CMS or 'expand' upon what was already performed. This content has been
migrated to the 'archive' Web site, which is slated to be taken offline in October.
If you think Web content is lean now, wait until October when tens of thousands
of person-hours of Web development simply vanishes (if you have a favorite Web page
in the archives, you better save it to your local computer now before it's gone).
Practically, however, even under the best of circumstances, Gauley River NRA
(or Fort Bowie NHS or Minidoka Internment NM, as examples) will never
equal the content of units in the Park System that have been around for
100+ years; the amount of research that has been conducted over the years,
the plethora of resource specialists that exists in the larger/older parks,
and the general level of funding that national parks will always garner versus
smaller/less-visited park units will simply yield far more opportunities for Web
content for the Yellowstones/Yosemites/Mount Rainiers than the
Gauley Rivers/Fort Bowies/Mindoka Internments.
Hopefully NPS Management will someday come to recognize the value of having
BOTH a strong Web presence, in addition to the traditional in-park visitor
experience, so the Gauley River's in the System will offer something more
electronically than it does today.
Thanks for the insights from the inside, Tim. Providing templates is one thing, finding enough folks with the time to populate them is another;-)
The additional multimedia content that more and more parks are providing hasn't been overlooked. Indeed, it's been a valuable resource for the Traveler and well-received by many of our readers.
As you noted, the NPS stewards a wealth of information. Bringing much of that to the Internet is a great way to help educate and inform the public about those treasures in their backyards.
Thanks to everyone for this engaging conversation and for your interest in the design and information quality of park websites on NPS.gov. I manage the NPS web team, which works to make certain that every park, regardless of resources or size, has at least a basic web presence to help visitors get to and enjoy their parks. Although I formerly worked at a park, I cannot speak to how parks choose what or how much content that they provide since the choice of how each park's resources is allocated lies with their management. However, since I've been with the NPS web team for a decade, work with every park and office and see behind the scenes, I thought that it might benefit this dialogue if I clear up some of the confusion about our site.
It is true that we have begun to use a content management system (CMS) to manage our site, primarily because it provides our park and national program subject matter experts the ability to more quickly develop content rather than focus their resources on web development and design. Thus, instead of having a single web expert versed in web technologies (HTML, etc.) who is the only person that can manage a park's website, we now have some parks with up to 20-25 authors adding content to their sites (including employees, volunteers, partners and contractors), and there is no limit to how much content they can provide (some parks now have sites with a thousand or more pages). For those parks that do have web expertise at their disposal, those skills are now focused on more advanced content, such as flash features, webcams, video and podcasts.
While this system can seem a bit constraining to the aspiring designer, the consistent design allows our visitors to focus on the information rather than constantly relearning the look and feel, which should be (and is) one of our usability goals. When you are serving many millions of visitors a month, many of them first timers to NPS.gov, consistency can be key to their experience. However, this post originated as a discussion on information quality, and any variations in that quality are now more apparent because of our consistent presentation. This has not gone unnoticed by NPS management and our team, and thus, we have started working with offices and parks to address the issue.
In addition, as one poster pointed out above, there are numerous legal requirements to which we are bound to adhere. Trying to manage those requirements across 600,000+ pages and approximately 2,000 web authors can be extremely difficult without a CMS. Now, though, as an example, if we have to address a Section 508 issue in a design, we can do it once to a handful of templates that then automatically correct the issue throughout the site. It's impossible to automate every requirement, but the more pressure that we can take off of our parks and allow them to focus more on serving the visitor and caring for the resources, the better.
We have only just begun to reap the benefits of moving to a CMS. Since we're still in transition, we've got a ways to go before all of the tools are in place.There are some legal and policy barriers that affect our ability to do so more quickly, but our management is working to address those issues as well. This system puts us in a good position, though, to respond to the public's desire for more interaction, transparency and sharing of data. The NPS is the steward of a wealth of information about our national treasures, some of it managed by the individual parks and some of it not. When our site was static HTML, it was often not easy to find all of this information. Slowly but surely, though, we are making all of this information more discoverable and at the fingertips of our stakeholders, the American public (and our global audience, as well).
As I've indicated, there is often more at play than meets the eye, and sometimes even a bit of confusion about what we are doing (for example, we have not removed any park content from NPS.gov unless requested by the managing park or park's regional office). However, I can assure you that we work diligently on the parks and national programs' behalf, looking for ways that we can help them achieve their goals and the NPS mission, while at the same time working within the framework provided to us by Congress, OMB and our Department.
Thanks again, and if anyone has additional feedback that you feel would benefit our efforts (including constructive criticism...it's all welcome!), please feel free to email me anytime.
Tim Cash
Acting NPS Web Manager