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Best Website on Great Lakes Regional Culture in 2002

Webmaster Christine Manninen accepts the CGLC award for Best Website from Center Director, Dr. C. Kurt Dewhurst

The award for the Best Website on Great Lakes Regional Culture in 2001 was presented to The Great Lakes Information Network (GLIN). The network describes itself as "a partnership that provides one place online for people to find information relating to the binational Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region of North America. GLIN offers a wealth of data and information about the region's environment, economy, tourism, education and more. Thanks to its strong network of state, provincial, federal and regional partner agencies and organizations, GLIN has become a necessary component of informed decision making...." Founded in 1991, the network strives to be a trusted and reliable source of information for those who live, work, or have an interest in the Great Lakes region.

This website was selected both because of its quality content and exceptional web design. GLIN's extensive partnerships ensures that the network provides up-to-date information about activities in the region as well as collects and disseminates valuable information which contributes to our understanding of the cultural, social, and economic history of the Great Lakes area. For example, their Information Center provides regional news, an events calendar, a laws and policy reference guide, and links to current job opportunities and funding sources. In addition, the website provides access to a variety of communication tools, including their popular e-mail list: glin-announce, highlights a Great Lakes region site of the month, provides lists of general regional resources, and is currently developing a GLIN Maps and a Geographic Information Systems (GIS is a term that describe the creation, manipulation, analysis, and storage of spatial data). The network explains that the objective of this exciting project is "to provide a place where people can find and submit digital data for areas within the Great Lakes region. This site has four major parts: GIS Datasets, Online Mapping, Map Gallery, and Resources. Users can search for datasets by topic, geographic regions, organizations, or at the GLIN Data Access (GLINDA) Clearinghouse. GIS can be experienced over the Internet through Online Mapping. Map Gallery offers several high quality images that are free for downloading. Resources contains additional information about GIS in the Great Lakes basin."

In terms of web design, GLIN does a superb job of striking an effective balance between serving meaningful content in an organized and creative manner. Text is complimented with relevant images, external and internal links are maintained, and site organization ensures that readers can move easily between topics and pages. In addition, the web designers should be complimented for paying careful attention to usability issues and concerns such as font type, background and font color, the length of lines across the screen, image size and download time, and overall page design.

The Best Website Award was presented by Center Director, Dr. C. Kurt Dewhurst to webmaster Christine Manninen at the CGLC Conference, "Mapping Great Lakes Identity: Past, Present, and Future."