Historic Document Website Review

In this post I will look at some major sites for collections of historical information online. These sites are meant to make history more accessible, and they do. The introduction of this new media means that with it there should also be an analysis of the way in which information is translated into this new format. That is what I will attempt to provide here.

There are some common design features that bind most of these informational websites together. One is the search feature. It is assumed that a site will provide the ability to navigate with keywords in a search feature. Also, most of the sites contain the standard navigation bar at the top and or bottom of the site. All of the major categories are included in the bar which allows the user to more easily browse for information through categorical navigation.

For each of the online resources I will answer the following questions:
1) Procedures for accessing information on the site.
2) The extent to which the site offers an interpretation of the material presented.

I chose to look first at the collection: Green ‘N Growing: The history of 4H and Home Demonstration in North Carolina. This resource documents the history of 4H in North Carolina and the United States.
1) There is a useful bar at the top of the site, just underneath the title illustration that provides all of the useful categories. Included in the bar is a search feature that also proves useful when making a distinction between pictures, text or video. The other interesting tab is one that provides “Teaching Tools”. This selection leads to a vast array of teachable lessons to incorporate the 4H ideals or history into the classroom.
2) The only place that this can be seen is in the timeline section. There are hints about the impact of 4H programs on the outcome of the war.

Next, I looked at Documenting the American South from UNC Chapel Hill. This site includes a variety of primary sources as well as teaching materials for NC History and US History.
1) There is a collections tab that allows the user to navigate through primary and secondary source materials on a subject-by-subject basis. There is also a google search that allows the user to search the entire site, including all of the collections. This would help to access a particular item, but browsing is also a simple process.
2) Specifically in one collection, “The Church in the Southern Black Community”, some interpretations are made. The introduction explains some ideals that we would certainly espouse, but that are interpretations nonetheless.

Next is the National Archives Experience, which has a large volume of historical pictures from US History.
1) This has one of the more confusing interfaces I have ever seen. In an attempt to make the site visually innovative, the designers have made their site more complicated. The additional complication also makes the site slower to load than it has to be. When a document is targeted, other relating articles are placed around it in haphazard fashion. The redeeming factor is that the photos all have good titles when they are cued with the cursor.
2) When the associations are made between various related documents, there is a small amount of interpretation being made.

The National Security Archive is a site that brings together various documents and media that depict the efforts to protect the United States from external and internal threats.
1) There is a “New Postings” area of the front page that helps to direct the user to the newest information, but this front page is also very cluttered with a variety of vastly different topics. There are no clear headings and that leads to confusion.
2) The topics discussed here are highly politically charged, and for the most part, they are allowed to speak for themselves. There are a couple collections of documents that are grouped together with commercially produced theatrical presentations that venture deeply into the realm of interpretation.

The last site I chose is Cultural Readings: Colonization and Print in the Americas. This site looks at the pre and post-colonial native cultures in the Americas.
1) The navigation on this site is the most difficult. Since the amount of information is smaller, there is no focus on the ability of the user to seek out information. The information that is contained is hard to decipher because it is labeled under non-descriptive categories that require entry into the material to understand its contents.
2) There is the normal academic glorification of all things non-western in the introductions to the material. The primary sources are interesting, but it is difficult to deal with the necessary descriptions when they are worded with obvious bias.