Lighthouse Web sites that focus on a particular state, county or region can easily organize their pages in alphabetical order since their list of buildings is not terribly long. In my section on the analysis and review of similar Web sites I surveyed two sites with pages on hundreds or thousands of buildings: "Great Buildings online" and "New England Lighthouses: A Virtual Guide." To deal with a large amount of information on buildings scattered over such a vast area, the designers of the respective sites placed search engines on the opening pages of their Web sites. "The Great Buildings" search engine allows visitors to be quite specific in their search criteria in order to narrow the search of its vast collection. "New England Lighthouses" deals with a much smaller region so that site uses a picklist to narrow the search to a particular state where the lighthouses are then listed alphabetically.

I will use the picklist model since the number of demolished lighthouses is closer to the number of all the lighthouses in New England than the list of great buildings in the world. Once a user picks a lighthouse from an alphabetical list they will find a sub-menu. Once again, "New England Lighthouses" serves as a model. On that Web site the sub-menu consists of: history, bibliography, cruises photos, postcards, and maps. The sub-menu on my page will be more along the lines of: Congressional hearings, floor debates, statutes at large, architectural plans, photos, and 3-D images. In the case of primary documents, the link will take you to a list of citations where you will have the choice of viewing a pdf file or a transcription.

In addition to string of hyperlinks at the top and bottom giving you the options to jump to various sections on the site, A small image in the upper right corner of all of Web pages will be a link back to the homepage. The image will be an architectural drawing to represent the building of lighthouses.

Rationale: Why A Digital Format?

One good thing about Web sites that provide information and photographic collections of lighthouses is that they allow people to "visit" beacons in faraway or remote places without the investment of time or money. Sites like these are an alternative for people who are prohibited for one reason or another from visiting actual physical locations. These beautiful and exotic destinations are brought right to people's desktops.

A traditional publication with approximately one page describing each lighthouse that no longer exists would run about 1,000 pages. This project proposes to include all of the available primary documentation illustrating the authorization and construction of lighthouses that are no longer standing on American shores. Since this Web site is planned as an archive, my plan is to continue to add to the site as more documents are uncovered. A CD-ROM or traditional book would not allow for this kind of flexibility.

There are many people who enjoy lighthouses, but in all likelihood there are very few who would be willing to purchase a multi-volume set of books about non-existent navigational structures. A Web site would allow people to read just what they're interested in without having to pay for information that doesn't interest them. Would most people would rather visit a lighthouse than read about one? In addition to providing the primary sources documenting the creation of these destroyed lighthouses, this site will offer a three dimensional representation of those structures so visitors can pay a "virtual visit" to them. People can visit whatever bygone lighthouse they want and if they decide they want to know more about an individual beacon they can dig as deep into the primary sources as they want without a financial investment on the scale of a set of encyclopedias.