Week 2 - Website Review

How do these four web sites represent different approaches to history on the internet?
The four websites:

The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil Warhttp://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vshadow2
The History Channelhttp://www.historychannel.com
Do Historyhttp://www.dohistory.org
National Museum of American Historyhttp://americanhistory.si.edu/index.cfm

These are all websites that are based around supplying historical reference to people through the internet. These four websites, however, differ greatly in their approach to presenting historical information. The “Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War” opens onto a website that is built like an archive library. The hyperlink view is even designed to represent this showing what appears to be three floors of a library representing Beginning, During, and After the Civil War. You can then click through these “Library Floors” and access archive materials. Everything presented here is historical documents, pictures, letters etc. There is no running narrative describing this portion of history, only these materials to aid any researcher in their quest for Civil War knowledge. In short, this is an Online Archive granting anyone access to historical documents.

The second website is the History Channel website. This website is spawned off of the History Channel which has more recently become very popular on cable television and consequently, heavily commercialized. The website reflects this hosting a barrage of internet advertisements for DVD sales, and cars and many other items. However, once you get past all of this paraphernalia the History Channel website does offer some useful and original options. One this it has is a section called “History Now” which acts like a news reel of modern historical events. This and other aspects of the website including its shopping section and video playback section make the History Channel website seem almost like a History based version of Yahoo.com. But with some searching a viewer can find historical information. The presentation of historical information here tends to be more of the narrative quality, reading like a textbook and giving an overview of historical events and information instead of providing archived materials only. The website also hosts an interesting compilation of History lesson plans, giving information on teaching history, and providing it to others in a structured manner. In all, this website, while being commercialized to the fullest extent, provides people with historical information much like you would find in a book ranging across the years but in such abundance that it is almost impossible to find the materials you need. Unfortunately it is not too user friendly.

The third website is the Do History website. This is a very interesting and unique website whose goal is to “invites you to explore the process of piecing together the lives of ordinary people in the past. It is an experimental, interactive case study based on the research that went into the book and film A Midwife's Tale” This website details the history of one Martha Ballard, and shows how research and study was used to piece together her life story. It provides various tools and resources so that the internet visitor can be instructed as to how this sort of research is done, and how to create the life history of someone they would like to research. This website provides the user “skills and techniques for interpreting fragments that survive from any period in history” This website is a more detail oriented research tool used to research and map figures from history.

The third website is the website for the National Museum of American History. This is a fairly straightforward website that both advertises for, and informs about the National Museum of American History. While perusing this website the internet surfer will be able to find out anything they would like about the Museum, such as what is on display, what is new, what is on rotation through the museum, and when new displays will be arriving. This website is not a source of historical information but is more like the Valley of the Shadow website in that it displays materials that are stored elsewhere; however these materials can be viewed much easier by simply visiting the museum. This website is the sort of site you would use, not as an online research tool like the other three would be, but you would use it to plan your trip to the museum, finding out what you would like to see and view.

These four websites each view history in a different fashion, from archived resources, to displaying materials available on location, to historical summary, to teaching you how to do your own historical research. They each offer a different tool to those exploring the avenues of history and depending on the research you are conducting each holds unique possibilities.