JFK Library

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum    I could not find a date that the website was created.  I visited the site on 5/22/09.

This website covers JFK‘s life, death, presidency, family life, pretty much everything you could want to know about him.

I took a look at the White House Restoration.  It was interesting but I wish it was longer. The restoration section was two pages long. It gave a brief introduction on The White House itself and the previous tenant’s restoration efforts. It gave a lot of detail about how the restoration committee came to be formed and the creation of a curator.  There were photos on the pages that you could click on to enlarge.  They opened in another page which was nice because you did not have to navigate back to the page that you were on.  There also was a short description of the photo at the top when you opened it and also a details tab with a more complete explanation of the photograph. At one point in the article it mentioned the televised tour of The White House that was shown on CBS.  It would have been a nice addition to that particular part of the website if there had been a link to that video. I would have been very interested to see the whole thing (I have seen parts of it on different news shows). I found it interesting that Mrs. Kennedy did not look at it as redecoration but restoration. That was not something I had really thought of before. She said that everything that was put in The White House must have a purpose and be there for a reason.  Through her efforts The White House was classified as a museum therefore preserving everything and ensuring that no items would be auctioned off or become part of any president’s private collection.

As for the site itself, there is a lot of information. I did not find it the easiest site to navigate to and had to open quite a few things before I found the area I was looking for and then look around some more to find.  There were sections with the plus sign next to them. For first time users they might not know what that meant and might never expand to the section they were looking for. When you navigate back by using the back button everything that was expanded would be closed again and you would have to expand it again.  This was frustrating especially at first when I was trying to find my way through to the section I wanted. There are bars at the top which open things in a different way but I did not discover that until after I had gone through what I just described and I found that because I could not remember how I had gotten where I ended up in the first place. I would imagine that a lot of students would use this site for information for projects.  Younger students may navigate through the site better than I did. I was unable to find that video of the televised tour although there were many links to look through when I searched for it.  The text was easy to read and the photos when they were enlarged were very clear and crisp.

I know this is a very large site with lots and lots of information but I think I would have more links on pages to connect things more.