Hypertext on American History http://grid.let.rug.nl/~welling/usa/revolution.html

Content

The website entitled Hypertext on American History by George M. Welling and Garry Wiersome serves as a definitive resource for collection and organization of history material. The information included on this site varies in content and style. The organization of the page allows the viewer to browse the information on the site in a chronological order, through the outline, or by topic, through essays and documents. This site has a vast amount of information contained in the essays that is written by many scholars, each with their own list of references. These essays serve to give the viewer insight on the historical issues in question by allowing them to read the interpretations of another individual. In addition to this, there is also a definitive list of documents to utilize -- from the Magna Carta to Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech.

Instead of simply discussing one topic, this site serves as an organizational tool to compile essays, documents, and biographical histories on a large array of topics. Much of the information presented on this site is presented in text form. The purpose of the site is to explore American history as a whole, and therefore offers many sources of information concerning the major topics and events of American history.

Design

The site's purpose presents a great challenge for its designers. Because this site contains such large amounts of information, organization is the key to success. The site utilizes a side margin on the first page that allows the viewer to access the chronological link site (outline), the essays in a topical order, or the biographies. This provides the viewer with a more managable unit of information. There are a large amount of links available on this site to ensure organization. However, they do present difficulties in that they can lead the viewer far away from the main sections of the site, and even away from the site entirely. Fortunately, the site has both a top and bottom margin that can guide the viewer back to the original section that they were viewing.

The information presented in this site is very readable- many of the essays are only in text form and do not have too much to distract the reader. The backround is white, so the contrast provides for very visible text. The presence of a colored left side margin manages to make the essays a little more interesting. The flaws of this site are that the essays have no side margins and therefore seem a bit cluttered. In addition to that, there are few images within the actual text of the documents, and this makes the site less enticing to the viewer.

Technical Skill

There are large amounts of information already present in this site. In addition to that, it has many links to outside sites that can serve as an additional resource for the topic being explored. This site does not aspire to contain audio or video segments, probably because the vast size of this site would prevent the viewer from being able to access it.

This site does manage to utilize some basic design techniques, though its primary purpose is functionality- it simply wants to organize the information and make it readily available to the viewer. If the site did not require so much power to access it, instructors could certainly use it to supplement their texts with additional images and design. However, the organization is clear and concise, and the use of color and design make this an appealing site, although probably not the most exciting one.

This site would be very valuable to a variety of people. It is written and organized in such a manner as to be a wonderful resource to students from middle school to college. In addition to that, this site would be a good starting point for any individual in need of research or information about historical issues since it is clearly one of the most definitive web resources on American history.