Kathleen Feild
Website Evaluation Project
Due: Monday, September 9, 2002
This evaluation is for the website titled Luminarium, located at http://www.luminarium.org/medlit. Luminarium, in itself, is divided into three different periods of literature: medieval, renaissance, and 17th century. For class purposes, this paper discusses only the medieval section. My analysis is drawn from the author's credentials, coverage, and structure of the website.
When she speaks of her own credentials, the author merely has a bachelor's degree in English, and does not state whether she has done any research in this area[1]. Using this as a basis, in addition to the fact that the site is not affiliated with any institution of higher education, the reader should be skeptical of the validity of the works. The purpose of the website seems informative. For example, the author states that the primary audience is students looking for information about literature. However, the information is largely secondary, being taken either from other websites or The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 6th edition. Even after claiming, "Everything is verified from the authorities in a given subject," [2] the author does not lead the reader to details of who these authorities are.
Luminarium covers various authors and works of medieval literature, including Geoffrey Chaucer and Sir Thomas Malory. The information for many of the authors is divided into their lives, works, and essays and articles other people have written about them. Most of the information about the authors and works on the website comes from links to pages outside the Luminarium domain, with most coming from universities.
The list of links to outside resources, essays, and articles is considerable, and is neatly divided into carefully planned sub-lists. After every link, the name of either the author or the organization that authored the site is included. On the main page of links, the site even classifies whether the author of the link is a student or not. This leads the reader to sources that are valid resources to utilize. As a supplement to many of the pages within Luminarium, medieval artwork is displayed, in order to give the reader a visual image of the arts during the time period of the authors. The question needs to be asked, however: who, if anyone, owns the copyright to these paintings and if this website is infringing on that copyright, since it states nothing about it. The site merely states the author, the title, and where it can be found online.
The site is very well organized and very easy to navigate. It shows the author has put much time into developing a site that can be a resource for students. The links are very informative for the topics given. I would suggest this website as a nice starting point to find other resources, but not as a resource itself, due to the author's lack of credentials.