About the NOAA 200th Anniversary Celebration Web Site

Purpose and Organization

The NOAA 200th Anniversary Celebration Web site provides a centralized location for NOAA to communicate to the public, NOAA employees, and others about agency activities in commemoration of the establishment of NOAA's first components in 1807. The site is organized around the past, present, and future time periods, with content that highlights the science, service, and stewardship activities of all facets of NOAA.

The site offers several categories of content. Under Foundations, visitors can read the stories of major NOAA activities, starting with their origins. In Transformations, stories of recent (within the past 30 years) changes within NOAA are told. And in Visions, visitors can read articles about what the next 20 years may hold for NOAA. Many topics within these sections include stories for all three time periods, and visitors can navigate between linked stories or visit the View All Topics page to explore all available stories. Feature Stories, published monthly, tell tales of projects, programs, and people who have helped shape NOAA and add flavor and insight to the broader organizational story. Within the Top Tens section of the Web site, visitors can learn about NOAA's most notable History Makers, Breakthroughs, Historic Events, and Foundation Data Sets, as nominated by NOAA staff and selected by a NOAA committee. Under Collections, visitors can browse through collections composed of five to 20 objects with significance in marine history, research, human/sea interactions, or human understanding of the sea. Each collection illustrates an underlying theme or principle that ties all the objects in the collection together.

About the Celebration provides an overview of the celebration itself. Those interested in learning more about NOAA's history can visit the NOAA Historical Resources section of the site, which provides access to other NOAA history Web sites, organized by topic. Teachers, students, and others may wish to visit the For Kids and Educators section to access NOAA educational Web sites and materials, also organized by topic.

Finally, visitors can access the "Of Special Note" feature on the home page to learn when new materials are added and changes are made to the site.

We hope you will enjoy the NOAA 200th Anniversary Celebration Web site and will find the information provided here helpful.

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Accessibility

Every attempt has been made to make this site compliant with Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Additionally, we have provided a link to a detailed Site Index on every page. This index provides a direct link to most pages in the site for simple text navigation. Pages that are not listed in the index are supplement pages that are enlarged views of images and illustrations.

Please notify us of any specific accessibility problems that you encounter, or any suggestions you might have on how we could improve the site's access. Please email these comments and suggestions to: celebrating200years.webmaster@noaa.

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Editorial Policy

This site is managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce. As a federal government site, all federal editorial policies apply, such as those on privacy, copyright, commercial promotion, etc. Materials posted on this site are reviewed by NOAA professional staff prior to publishing. Final decisions are made by the site's editorial team. All material on the site resides in the public domain and can be freely distributed, unless otherwise noted. Use of appropriate photo and image credits is requested.

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Technical Information

Browsers. This site is best viewed in Firefox, version 1.5 and above, or Internet Explorer, version 6.0 and above. Web site visitors using earlier versions of these browsers may encounter occasional format anomalies when viewing and printing pages from the Web site. Performance of this site has not been tested on browsers other than Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Access Time. Some pages on this site contain numerous images. The images provide necessary visual supplements for the text and enhance the visual appeal of the page. All images have been provided with captions to allow those users who cannot load images immediately to select specific images for viewing. Pages have been developed to load text first.

Links. Links are provided to many external Web sites, chiefly other NOAA Web sites, as reference or supplemental material. External sites that are accessed by these links will launch a new browser session in a single, separate browser window. Each external site that is accessed will appear in this same browser window until the window is closed. A limited number of links to non-U.S. government sites are included. Users are notified that they are leaving a U.S. government Web site by a separate page that appears on screen for approximately 20 seconds.

Fonts and Type Sizes. Verdana is the default font for this site; 10 point is the default size. All browsers allow users to select specific fonts and type sizes for display. Some users select large type sizes for ease of reading, or specific fonts for personal tastes. The text and layout should not be adversely affected by a user's selection of alternative fonts and type sizes.

Printing Pages. This site has been designed to ensure simple printing. We recommend printing in landscape format at a scale of 100 percent. Printing in portrait format at 100 percent may result in some parts of the extreme right side of a page being cut off. For printing in portrait format, we recommend printing at a scale of 90 percent.

Downloadable Documents. Some documents are available on this site as downloadable files in Portable Document Format (pdf). These files can be viewed on microcomputers equipped with recent versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader. Adobe Acrobat Reader can be downloaded for free.

There are some known issues with downloading PDF documents, particularly on Windows systems, due to conflicting changes in the way in which Acrobat Reader and various browsers talk to one another. But there is a simple work-around: if you right-click (Windows) or option-click (Macintosh) on the link, the entire file will be sent to your machine, and then you can open it off your own hard drive using Acrobat Reader.

Navigation. Navigation through the site is straightforward. There are four levels of navigation. The first level provides access to the major sections of the site and is at the top of each page under the NOAA Celebrates 200 Years banner and in the left-hand column. The second level is in the right-hand column which generally includes section navigation, additional essays, and links to external Web sites for complementary information. The third level is within-page navigation found at the top of some pages that includes links to sections within the page. The fourth level includes text links within page content.

Index and Search This Site. A link to the site index and the search box appear on every page. The Site Map is a complete listing of every page on the site and includes links to each of those pages. Search is a standard word/phrase search capability for all text and documents (pdf) on the site's pages.

Advanced Features. To view video features, users will need either QuickTime or Windows Media Player software. A T-1 or cable modem connection is highly recommended. For users with slower Internet connection speeds, smaller file-size and window-size versions of videos are available. Please be patient while waiting for the video to download.

For Further Technical Information. For questions or comments about the technical aspects of this site, e-mail: 200yearswebmaster@noaa.gov

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