Launching Into A New Year

Date: 1-17-2018

One of the challenges for us working in the National Park Service is to provide access to our national heritage while preserving that heritage for the generations to come. It has been and always will be a delicate balance.

When I became the museum curator here in November 2016 it quickly became clear to me that there was great potential for the South Florida Collections Management Center to provide greater access to the museum and archive collections in our care. Indeed, many people appear not to know that every park in the system has such collections, and we are eager for the public to use them for research, education, and enjoyment.

This is one reason why we are thrilled now to have this web site, in NPS lingo an organization site, that provides some information about us to the visitors to our five parks and to others interested in those parks who visit us online from all over the world. This site is just the first step. Yet to come is our subject site, a different web experience that will provide much more content. It will debut in mid-2018 and will continue to grow over the years as we digitize more and more of our collections and work with partners to provide other access portals to the nearly 7.5 million objects in our care.

My sincere thanks to our web and social media intern Taneisha Clark for her hard work on these sites. We would not be this far along without her skill and dedication. Please be in touch with me or the other staff members (who you can see through the Contact Us link at the bottom of the page) with questions and comments.

Jim Williams
Museum Curator and Program Leader