National Cold War Exhibition
The National Cold War Exhibition opened in February, as we alerted in January, and looks as if it has become a handy online resource too, being equipped with an online learning section, and an online archive.
For some reason, it shares the same irritating fascination of having a Flash header that subjects the newly arrived visitor to a wailing siren, in a similar manner to that which one has to endure every time Scotland’s Secret Bunker site is visited, presumably to impress them with the feeling of an impending nuclear attack, and machine guns. It’s not particularly clear why both sites should feel the need to assault the visitor with this sort of triviality when dealing with such a deadly serious subject - or perhaps that’s why. Either way, it’s a nuisance, especially as the siren restarts itself after a while.
They should both dump this piece of rubbish code, or have a big KILL button so it can be disabled quickly, or better still, have it silent to start with, with a button to turn it on if you’re that keen to have this greet you on every arrival.
The National site has a further irritation in that every time you visit the Archive, you are presented with a full copyright warning, and have to click an “I agree to the conditions” button every time you want to go in and take a look. The rest of the world seem to get by with Terms & Condition attached to use of their sites, so why does the National site have to overboard? It’s not as if a lot of the archive material is unique to them, and I suspect a lot will be Public Domain now, due to its age, military background, and of American origin, where copyright is less restrictive. Despite their best attempts to waste an interesting site - also not helped by presenting everything in tiny little fixed size scrollable windows - there are some less well publicised stories to be found if you dig around.
Unfortunately, things still don’t manage to improve their 0 out of 10 score for effort when you fire up the Search option, or what they refer to as “THE COLD WAR INFORMATION QUICK FINDER”. Admittedly, this works well, and will find any site contents that lies within it various categories - and that’s where the problem lies. If what you want to find out about doesn’t lie conveniently in the few categories that they present for you to search within, then your search is dead before it has started. If you want to search for something that doesn’t land in one of their categories, then you can’t enter a word to search for.
For example, I wanted to see if they had any detail of the ROC, the Royal Observer Corps, who would have been responsible for monitoring and reporting bomb detonation details, analysing their size, distance etc, and then providing observation and meteorological data to allow fallout patterns to be predicted. Are there any categories offered for people or organisation involved in the Cold War? Nope. You can have: Display Aircraft, Missiles, Ships, Other Aircraft, Submarines, Vehicles, Biographies, Countries, Squadrons, and Timeline, but of your subject doesn’t land in one of those, which you must select first, then you can’t enter something to search for.
It’s just irritating, there’s lots of info there, and lots of pics (irritating again, as they have no captions - maybe they’re coming), and things are fine if you find it using the imposed search method, but try and stray off that line, and hunt for something off the set course, and you’re stumped.
I still like, and recommend it, just wish it was ‘better’.
