Web Review - Mennonite Conference Websites
The Mennonites are a fairly small group of people. They include somewhere in the vicinity of 1.3 million people and some 60 percent of that number live in Africa, Asia, or Latin America. There are also quite a few different types of Mennonites. Amish, Old Order Mennonite, and Conservative Mennonite represent a few of these variations.
For my research project this semester I am planning on digitizing the Brotherhood Beacon, which is one of the publications of the Conservative Mennonite Conference (CMC). Since this archive will most likely be held on the CMC website I thought it would be interesting to survey how the CMC website compares with other Mennonite conference websites. I would also like to pay special attention to whether or not any other conferences have digitized and made available any of their publications on their websites.
That said, I began my search for other Mennonite conference websites by simply doing a search through google for “Mennonite conference.” This brought up many more websites than I would ever want to search through, but I clicked on a few of the ones that looked like official conference websites of some of the more major groups within the Mennonites. After bringing up these primary ones, I searched through their links and found a few others that the google search had missed (or hidden somewhere far down in the list of results).
There are far too many Mennonite conference websites to include in this review, so I will try to examine a sampling of conference websites ranging from the primary conferences to smaller ones within the Mennonite umbrella. Quality varies drastically over even this small sampling.
The first website that I looked at was the website of the Mennonite Church USA. This is a fairly large group of Mennonites, in fact the largest conference of Mennonites in the country. Their website is fairly extensive although not particularly easy to navigate. The primary components are informative sections on who they are, statements of faith, and current news. The main links seem to be piled rather than spaced out. It seems they could clarify how each relates and make it easier to navigate by grouping links to the various parts of their website. They do have a fairly nice template in that it’s attractive, but in terms of usability it could be improved.
They seem to be primarily addressing Mennonites within their conference, although they also have a fair amount of sources that would be helpful for people outside the conference wondering about who they are. I think they should have a section “About Us” or something where they would give a quick (wikipedia style) explanation of who they are and how they fit into larger Mennonite groups. This makes sense that they would primarily be focused on their own conference in order to disseminate conference materials. And they do have a fair amount of conference materials posted online as well and places for people to order other materials. Interestingly, they also translate some of their materials into Spanish. I wonder whether this is attempting to connect with Mennonites in Latin America or within the U.S.? There are a fair amount of Mennonites throughout Latin America, but I would guess there are a growing number of Spanish-speaking Mennonites within the U.S. as well.
In terms of publications, they have a link to a separate part of their website where they’ve uploaded their publication, The Mennonite. They did a fairly good job with presentation and searchability of this resource. Not only can you browse through the last 4 years of the publication or so, they also have a great search function. Not only do they stop with a search function, they also have a Research Index that includes the ability to scan through authors, news, columns, and feature articles from that year. However, one weakness I think is that when you click on an article you’d like to view, it brings up the entire issue of the magazine from that month. Then you have to scan/scroll through that issue to find what you’re looking for. I think it would be nicer if they took you directly to the article you were looking for, but this would take more time to design. They also do all of their article/issue images in pdf. I’m still not sure what I think of this format. It’s nice for reading when you have a fast connection, but it could be horrible on a slow connection and Adobe Reader is such a slow program anyway. Overall, however their digitization of the magazine has come off very nicely. Although they don’t go very far back (only to 2001, really) and this could be expanded upon.
The second website that I looked at was the homepage of the Mennonite World Conference. Aesthetically, this website was of a much lower caliber. It looks like something someone could design fairly quickly without much knowledge of programming. I think it might partly be the white background that makes it look less professional. This is a fairly bare-bones website. As they are a larger umbrella organization it is easy to imagine that they probably don’t have as many resources to work with as say the Mennonite Church USA. They also have information on Mennonites and their conference, as well as some interesting resources showing distribution of Mennonites around the world.
Again they seem to have a split focus in terms of audience. Since they represent a larger group of Mennonites, they seemed to be focused more on clarifying who the Mennonites are rather than simply distributing materials to users/visitors within the conference. I guess they assume that conference members will look to their smaller conferences before visiting the umbrella organization for most materials. This might also reflect the fact that they encompass such a large and diverse group of people. Maybe there aren’t as many sources applicable to more diverse collections of people represented by the Mennonite World Conference.
They do not have any periodicals/regular publications online. They do have a few individual documents such as statements of faith, etc. They also have some multilingual resources, which makes sense given the wide array of people they represent.
The Lancaster Mennonite Conference has probably the least helpful front page of any of the conference websites that I visited. I don’t think their website structure is actually too bad. They have an outline format along the side with links to the various sections of their website. It’s just the front page—it doesn’t all fit on one screen and when you scroll down you find seemingly random pieces of information that you have to wonder why they’re on the front page. They do however have a google search of their site and this comes in handy for navigation. Actually, in terms of navigation, they’re not too bad. The outline format of links along the left-hand side works fairly well for figuring out where you want to go and getting there.
Their website seems to be oriented almost entirely to conference members. Maybe that is why their front page made so little sense to me. However, if you were a member of their conference you probably would have heard of the campaign that dominates their front page. They do have a fair amount of conference materials for members to check out and this is a good resource most likely for conference visitors. This issue of audience reaches a bit of dissonance within their publications, which I’ll address in a moment.
They have the last two years of their monthly newsletter online in a database. Interestingly, they have it available in pdf and html format. I’m not exactly sure why they do this, but it is an interesting twist. They have no search function so the usability declines a bit. And even their browse function is a little bit cumbersome. In another interesting twist of imagination (or forethought in web structure, maybe) they have archives of their publication for 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. Not sure exactly how they have archives of that which has not been written, but I’m interested in learning how to see the future as they apparently do. The last interesting twist, which might actually have some increased usability is that each of their articles that users view in html can be translated into Spanish. Getting back to my comment about mixing audiences though I’m not sure exactly how this connects with their apparent target audience of primarily conference members. Maybe there is a larger group of Spanish-speaking people in the Lancaster Conference than I realize but this seems to be an interesting tool that might be better applied in different contexts. It is a neat tool though.
The next website that I examined was the Virginia Mennonite Conference. They are a subconference of the Mennonite Church USA. They have a more aesthetically pleasing interface for users than the Lancaster Conference, but there is not a lot of content on the website (relatively speaking). Navigation is fairly straightforward on their website as well, so overall I would say that it is well-designed.
Their primary audience again seems to be conference members. And they do have a fair amount of resources for this group of people, but they do not introduce themselves to those outside the conference very well. It seems to be a fairly small conference and this is communicated by the types of materials that they have online, which make it seem as if most people in the conference know each other.
They have a small archive of their publication: Connections: Virginia Mennonite Conference News. It seems as if it would be easily browsable, although they have no search function to search within documents. Unfortunately, most of the links within their archive are broken so it was hard to see many examples of their newsletter or its format. It appears that they use pdf format, but I was only able to view a few examples through their website. Additionally, their archive only goes back to 2002.
The final website which I will include in this web review is the site of the Conservative Mennonite Conference. This is the site where I hope to store the database of their monthly publication (called the Brotherhood Beacon) which I will be digitizing for my final project. I must say that this website is by far the most attractive of the websites that I included in this review, which is surprising for various reasons. They are a fairly small conference and they stem from the Amish, who as you might have guessed are not too big on technology. To be fair, there are some major distinctions between them and the Amish.
This site is very easily navigable and integrates a simple, yet attractive, template for each page of the site. They have an excellent amount of resources for the size of the conference and lay out the structure, history, and place of the conference very simply.
Their audience again seems to be split. They have resources to introduce those outside the conference to who they are and what they believe, but they also have resources for those within the conference in further researching the structure of the conference and finding other resources. One of their best resources is a “Frequently Asked Questions” section. I think this would be a helpful addition to each of the websites in this review.
Turning to their publications section, they have a few articles digitized from recent issues of the Brotherhood Beacon, but not complete issues. Also, most of the articles that they include come from the last 2 years. They are browsable, but not searchable, and they are all in pdf format. The conference also has a few of their other materials digitized. They also have a list of resources that are held within their archives, which are in Rosedale, Ohio.
This is where my own project will fit in. I will begin by digitizing the earliest five years of the Brotherhood Beacon and putting it somewhere within their web structure. Adding searchability will be essential as hopefully the archive will include the entire 35 years span of the publication. This will make it a unique resource among any of the various conference websites included in this review in that the archive of their monthly publication will go back much further than any other conference and be fully searchable throughout articles, titles, and authors.
Major questions that I’m confronting in this task is whether to use the streetprint database engine to construct the archive or whether I should try to integrate it into the template of the Conference’s website more fully. I’m not sure how fully adaptable the streetprint engine is in matching the template of the conference. Another question is whether to use pdf or jpg images for the archive. Most other conference sites seem to use pdf, but I’m unclear as to why. At some points pdf seems better, but at times it seems unwieldy and slow especially for people with slower internet connections. In terms of audience for the site, I think most people accessing the database will members of the Conservative Mennonite Conference themselves. To bit a bit stereotypical, many of these people live in rural areas where high-speed internet connections are less common. I’m not sure how much of a factor this should be in the decision of what type/size of images to use in the database.
Hopefully, this web review gives a bit of insight into what type of Mennonite conference websites are out there and how the Conservative Mennonite Conference (which I will be working with) fits into this larger grouping. I think that the Conservative Mennonite site is already unique in some ways and I’m hoping that my digitization project will add another element to their site where others lack historical resources. This will make the website more attractive to both researchers and those within the conference who want to peruse back through older issues of the conference and learn more about how it operated at various points in its history. At some point, I think it would also be great to go back even further and digitize earlier sources from the conferences history as well.