The Paris Pages Experience Index 
Museum / Monument Pages
Detail of the Panthéon where France honors its great men and women.
The Paris Pages now have definitive listings for all 138 museums in Paris - National, Private, Municipal, and otherwise (http://www.paris.org/Musees/). Similarly, there are pages for 56 major and minor monuments in the City (http://www.paris.org/Monuments/).
Each museum, or monument citation has two parts - one generated from a database of basic information, the other a collection of html pages made by hand with images, and additional text. Not all citations have the second component, but all major ones do.
While the current museum/monument database contains fairly rudimentary information, it is only part of the global database - the multimedia database - that the Paris Pages are. More will be said about how we associate the diverse data types in our concluding remarks.
The database of museums and monuments has the following fields:
From this database, html pages are automatically created organizing the two sections in the following ways:
- Name for alphabetizing
- Official Name
- Icon Image filename
- PdeP URL (French)
- PdeP URL (English)
- Official Web Site URL - if it exists
- Statute - who runs the museusm/monument
- Type - Museum or monument (The Louvre is both for example)
- Address
- Telephone / Fax
- Metro / RER / Bus stop
- Descriptive text - French
- Descriptive text - English
- French Keywords
- English Keywords
- Collection Codes
- Practical Information Codes
These standard pages are regenerated after significant changes to the database, or as appropriate. They also link to the more detailed hand created pages for that museum or monument it these exist. These pages in general contain more images, and more detailed history and description.
- Alphabetically
- Postal Code (Paris is divided into 20 Arrondissements - districts each with its own postal code.
- Category / Keywords - based on the Collection Codes / Keywords
- Nearest Metro stop
- Nearest RER stop
It should be mentioned that the Louvre pages are exceptional in that they quite detailed. They contain images of some of the major artworks to be seen the in the museum, a floorplan, history of the museum, and of the building, as well as a Scrapbook of images, some contributed.
We see two advantages for having static existing pages rather than a cgi query of the database:
- Redundant cpu usage is avoided - potentially important on a well visited site.
- Search engines have something to index.
International icons are used appropriatly to signal
Address
Telephone
Fax number
Métro stop
RER stop
Bus stop
Practical Information