The baby and the bathwater

Because I was a writer, I was the second person at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to have a PC on his desk. (The first was the museum's budget officer.) There was no Windows system yet, so when I booted up my PC each morning, what I got was a black screen with a C-prompt. The PC had a 20-meg hard drive, which seemed to me at the time to be immense.

Thus began a continuing love affair with PCs. Everything about them fascinated me. And still does.

While I was working at the museum full-time, I was also free-lancing for Style Weekly, writing a weekly column of television criticism. (Stick with me; I will connect these two themes.) My mailman must have hated me. Each week, the networks would send huge packages of press releases, photographs and VHS preview tapes. The volume of mail was extraordinary.

As the World Wide Web took shape and the use of it expanded exponentially, the TV networks established what they called "virtual media centers." Instead of sending out massive amounts of snail mail each week, each network set up a password-protected site for reporters where we could download news releases and high-resolution images and request preview tapes.

It occurred to me that such a site could save the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts a ton of money. We, too, had been sending press releases and transparencies to hundreds of reporters at great cost. In addition to the mailing, there was the added expense of duplicating hundreds of color transparencies for distribution.

So I suggested that VMFA set up its own "Media Room" on the Web. The suggestion was received with much skepticism. No other museum in the world had made such use of the Web at that point. I was told to do a cost-benefit analysis. Once that was submitted, VMFA enthusiastically embraced the idea. It was a clear money-saver.

I arranged a meeting with state government information-technology experts, and the design process began. I outlined what I wanted to do and what the site should look like (I shamelessly "borrowed" ideas from the TV network sites) and the VMFA Media Room was born. The savings in the public relations budget were enormous.

Some reporters and editors were slow to adapt to the system, but soon hundreds had registered for a password and were enthusiastically using this new 24/7 electronic resource.

Within months, we were invited by other museums to demonstrate and talk about our creation. My supervisor and I presented workshops and papers for other Virginia museums and, ultimately, at the annual meeting of the American Association of Museums. Art institutions in the United States and abroad followed our lead and created their own media resources on the Web.

Designing and implementing the VMFA Media Room on the Web was the most interesting thing I ever did at VMFA. I ran the site until I retired in 2004, and the museum then hired me as a contact worker to continue to manage the Media Room until I fully retired a year ago.

Alas, when I retired, the museum decided to revamp and combine its Web sites using off-the-shelf site-management software. Instead of maintaining a stand-alone site for the media, the "expert" consultants merged it with the museum's public site -- much to the detriment of the Media Room. Gone now is much of the flexibility and ease-of-use for reporters and editors.

It's been a year now since the baby was thrown out with the bathwater. Change happens so fast in information technology that we can assume improvements will be made.

But it's sad to see that VMFA has moved backward in its attempt to move forward.

Without a password, you won't be able to use much of what functionality is left on what the museum now calls its "Press Room" (the name itself is another step backward), but you can visit it by clicking here.