Ava Gardner Museum

It started as one fan's personal collection of pictures and newspaper clippings about a local girl "gone to Hollywood" back in the1940s and represents a digitization project that fits the parameters of worthy niche collections as described in "The Long Tail."

Today, the Ava Gardner Museum in Smithfield, North Carolina is open daily during normal business hours and on Sunday afternoons. What the Museum's Web site offers, besides keeping the Museum Shop open for business all the time, is an insight into the quality, and quantity, of the materials on physical display at the official bricks and mortar repository for Ava Gardner memorabilia. The Museum is a major attraction in Smithfield, N.C. (pop. 11,000; located near Raleigh on Hwy 70 East.)

The site designers used a white background on which to place the pics and links; the effect duplicates in pixels the same function as a museum's wall. Besides plenty of written information about Gardner's life, as well as the explanation of the way the collector met her, the site also includes a link to the National Cable TV schedule which lists when Gardner's movies are shown (updated monthly) on cable channels available across the U.S. (Where's the Pop Corn!)

Who would have ever thought that glamorous Ava was married to comical Mickey Rooney? On the other hand, after Ava's marriage to Frank Sinatra broke up, she never stopped loving the crooner. Hollywood Alert: Visit the Ava Gardner Museum at http://www.avagardner.org/ .

-yona