Assignment #2

For this assignment I examined four history websites, the Valley Project, the History Channel site, DoHistory, and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Each has a slightly different design philosophy which reflects a different approach to history on the web.

The Valley Project provides by far the most in-depth examination of the historical record; it has a narrower focus than the others, archiving records from two communities during the Civil War to serve as a case study of small town America (both North and South) before, during and after the war. The Project’s impressive visual index offers visitors easy access to groups of documents (from newspaper clippings to photographs, political cartoons, searchable census and war records, and personal letters and diaries) from the various time periods in the two counties. This digital archive contains a wealth of historical information, worthy of closer examination. However, although the site is easy to peruse, the volume of information is such that it cannot be taken in quickly or on one visit. Unless a user was looking for specific statistics or records, the site’s search engine, and specifically the high numbers of hits returned on general key words such as “Antietam,” “Gettysburg” or “1862” could quickly prove to be overwhelming.

The History Channel represents again a broader and more general overview of historical topics. Unlike the Valley Project this site featured a significant number of advertisements from sponsors. Centrally displayed is an inset displaying upcoming new shows on the television channel. The most popular content on the site is showcased along the left hand side of the screen in a scrolling toolbar. Also prominently featured is merchandising for popular History Channel programs as DVD sets. The site attempts to make itself “interactive” with users through a QuickPoll and a ‘Today’ option along the top toolbar linking to This Day in History. Visitors are invited to subscribe to an RSS feed for this function, providing a day-to-day trivia byte clearly aimed at attracting repeat visits. While the ads and design are somewhat garish, I think that the consumer-oriented approach as well as the daily updated content might well hold the interest of viewers to return.

DoHistory returns to the narrow, case-study formula, but this time instead of showcasing an entire community or comparing two counties to one another, it focuses on a single individual: Martha Ballard. Martha was a midwife, whose diary recorded more important information about her than any official documents. Apparently her diary is unique for its completeness, and the site is dedicated to teaching about Martha by allowing users to page through her diary and view digitized images of pages in her handwriting. Other sections of the site teach about the importance of primary source documents in historical research, and link to other websites for further reading on research methods. Overall this is a fairly dry presentation, probably geared towards scholars and history students already interested in this kind of approach to “active” history. I personally cannot see the life of a midwife as being exciting enough to draw non-specialists back to the site for further reading, and the links section is sprawling and poorly organized.

Last but not least was the Smithsonian site. Fittingly for a museum, the website serves as an online resource for those planning to visit the museum, and includes links to exhibitions and collections and educator tools. It also links to online exhibitions, although these lead to descriptive pages which link again to specific exhibition pages. Most useful on the site for prospective visitors are the upcoming events and programs, and potentially also the museum news. Since the museum is currently closed, the website probably is not experiencing as high traffic as it otherwise would.