Websites Analysis

Just googling the word history gave me over 1,120,000,000 results. when I did the same search a yahoo.com, I got over 4,770,000,000 results. However, it was just a decade and half ago that Morris Pierce (history Ph.D.) created one of the first departmental websites for the University of Rochester. Since then, the number of private, departmental, corporate, and governmental historical web site have blossomed on the web. Every single one of these web sites is different from other in terms structure, content, targeted audience and purpose. In this blog, I will state my personal opinion about three historical web sites which will classified each one of them as: The Good, The Bad or The Ugly.

The Good

Most historical web sites are often limited or just focused on a country, region of the planet, a period of time in history...But I have discovered this web sites which some how impressed me by its global historical content. HyperHistory Online website, has content of primary and secondary documents, and any historical topic, ranging from science, culture, religion, politics, and text books can be found. Moreover, there are subtitles which also range from people, maps, events and history to refine the search. Its also has over 2000 files covering over 3000 years of the world history.

http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/History_n2/a.html

The Bad

Maybe using the label “The Bad” is quite harsh but I would still go to this web site a collect very valuable and credible historical information on any topic related to the United States of America. The Library of Congress web site is very impressive when it comes to the density of it American history content. I was able to find contains of primary and secondary documents, exhibits, map collections, prints and photographs, sound recordings and motion pictures. However, the bad thing about the Library of Congress web site is that for some topics, you cannot get access to the content immediately. Some documents can be e-mailed to you later, after having provided some personal information of course. Nevertheless, the worst aspect about the Library of Congress is that some searches are just restricted or they give you as little information as possible about the subject of your search.

http://www.loc.gov/index.html

The Ugly

To say: “The Ugly” for an historical web site can be quite harsh as well. Nonetheless, there are really unreliable and uninformative web sites on the web and It takes some knowledge in the field in order to mak e that distinction and to reject the contents of those web sites. One historical web site that most scholars do not give credits to is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a historical web site in which anyone can post their entries, regardless of his/her knowledge or of the veracity of their entries. Most false information in wikipedia can be found in dates, occurrence of events, and biased facts (which are often the result of the person's belief, religion, culture or person convictions).

www.wikipedia.org/

Sinclair Allen

Sunday, January 25, 2010