The working life of Museum of London

Some of you may remember from my last blog that I mentioned that the Museum of London websites were changing inline with our rebranding to bring together our  venues and values, with new names and logos. We have now completed phase one of redesigning and moving around content on our websites. You can check out our striking new logos and our redesigned websites at:

• www.museumoflondon.org.uk
• www.museumoflondon.org.uk/docklands
• www.museumoflondon.org.uk/archaeology

In phase two and three, we will be auditing all our websites, holding audience evaluations to find out what our visitors think, and planning and implementing the migration of all our websites into one single site. This will involve analysis of our current website structures and planning the future architecture and redesigning of all the templates within our websites, including our microsites.

We would love to find out what you think of the websites and how it might develop in the future. So tell us what you think of the sites and the new ‘tabs’ that combine all our three venues together by sending me your comments to: webmanager@museumoflondon.org.uk.

Please note that we are aware some things may not display properly or some links may be broken, but please bear with us while we go through this transition period.

Thank you for all your continued support.

Museum of London is updating its branding and as a result the websites are undergoing a redesign for the rebrand launch on 14 October 2008.

We have been very busy working behind the screens to migrate the information from our ‘Group’ website to the Museum of London website and ensuring the rebrand is reflected in the Museum of London Docklands website (previously Museum in Docklands) and the Museum of London Archaeology website (Previously Museum of London Archaeology Service, or MoLAS).

You will see the new logos and redesigned sites when you visit us on 14 October, and the ‘Group’ website will no longer be updated and will eventually cease to exist.

This is just phase one of our plans. We aim to move all Museum of London content into a single website and will be planning further design changes and architectural changes to the site.

We would like to find out what our visitors think of the websites as of 14 October and how it might develop in the future. Please send your comments to: webmanager@museumoflondon.org.uk.

And if you participate in our focus groups to tell us what you think of our new website design, you will receive £30!

If you are interested in getting involved, and giving us your views, please visit:

www.creativeresearch.co.uk/surveys/mol/molrecruit.htm

Please note we are looking to hear from:

• Individuals aged 16 and above,
• Families (one adult aged 25 to 50 and one child aged 5 to 15 per family),
• People from both the UK and from overseas, and
• You do not need to be familiar with the Museum or its subject matter to take part.

Hello, my name is Bilkis Mosoddik and I am the web content manager for the Museum of London Group. Unlike my colleague Jeremy, I would not call myself a geek. I am simply a person who happens to enjoy interacting with technology and feel blessed that I enjoy what I do and earn a living from it, thank you!

I have been working for the Museum of London Group for more than two years now and it was more by accident than design that I ended up here as I never considered a career in museums before. Imagine my surprise when I first realised that the museum is more than just a place for curators and archaeologists to work in!

I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. One day I wanted to be a pilot and the next I would want to be a doctor. I nicely went along in this indecisive state doing what I enjoyed most, ‘fooling’ around with computers, whilst I decided on a ‘real career’.

And then one day I realised, “hey, I get paid to enjoy myself ‘fool’ around!” and here I am, still enjoying myself, still not sure what I want to be when I grow up.

As a web content manager, I am responsible for all the Museum of London, the Museum in Docklands, the Museum of London Group, and the Museum of London Archaeology websites and the staff Intranet.

My role varies from providing training to web authors within the Museum, to editing, approving and publishing content. Some days I could be reading about a fascinating find and editing amazing images to add to the websites, whilst other days I could be in meetings all day, talking about things ranging from usability, accessibility and diversity, and discussing new websites and games.

I do not design websites nor develop them, though I have a lot of input in any new websites that are created. I leave the headaches of coding and fixing bugs to my colleagues Jeremy and Mia!

I have many projects I am involved with at present and one of them is to make the Group websites accessible and usable as per the Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines.

An independent audit of our websites were carried out earlier this year, and the findings involved recommendations for improving parts of the site that were failing accessibility and usability either because of the design or the content.

My colleague, Jeremy, and I have been working on implementing these recommendations to make the site AA standard and we are constantly discovering new possibilities.

I won’t take up more time - I can go on forever about all the things I do at the Museum! So for now, I can say things to look out for in the New Year is a brand new Archaeology website that we have developed and just finished user testing on. We also have new major exhibitions at the Museum of London and Museum in Docklands that will have a huge web presence, so look out for those.