Peter Mateyka

Website Review

I am reviewing The Online Medieval and Classical Library located at http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/. I will use three major categories to determine the quality of this website. In the first category I will examine the type of website I am reviewing, by looking at the type of domain (.com, .edu…) and the type of site (website or personal page). In the second category I will try to determine the source behind the website, by examining the author or authors and their credibility. In the final category of will review the content of the site. My review will be based on the amount of information available, its relevancy, and the quality of any available links. I will also look at how easy the site is to use, as well as how often this site is updated.

The first impressions of The Online Medieval and Classical library are positive. The site is sponsored by The University of California Berkeley as well as Microsystems, Inc. [<=I believe it’s Sun Microsystems] The site also contains links to the homepages for California Berkeley and Microsystems, Inc. The domain heading of .edu affirms that this site is maintained by a reliable source.

The author of The Online Medieval website is Douglass Killings. His name is located at the top of the page with an email address at which he can be reached. The author’s name is also a link to another page. Usually this type of link contains further information about the author of the site. However, on this page, it contains an informal message, from the author, professing the need to shut down the page because he does not have enough time to maintain it. While I am disappointed to find out the page I am reviewing is no longer being updated, I commend the author for notifying the public of this dilemma. Unfortunately, nowhere on the page can I find the credentials of the sites [possessive] author. Furthermore, the given email address does not have a reliable domain name such as .edu.

Even though I have determined that this page is no longer being maintained, all of the site’s information is still intact and accessible. The site contains over thirty medieval and classical works documented by author, title, genre and language. [You conjoin dissimilar grammatical structures here, which results in an ungrammatical sentence=>The works appears to be complete, contain a short bibliography stating where the work has been taken from, and the site even lists other translations of the same work.] In addition[comma] the site suggests similar work that might be of interest to the reader.

There are no questions as to the relevancy of the work. Each piece is carefully documented by genre. Since this site contains both Medieval and Classical literature, I originally worried there might be some difficulty in examining just the medieval work. However, the medieval work is listed under categories such as Anglo-Saxon (Old English) and Middle English.

While the various works on the site are still relevant and useful, even though the page is not currently being maintained, the same cannot be said about the links to other websites. The site contains seven links to other sites with medieval literature. Of the seven links, I can only get four to work. One page has moved, and two others have been shutdown. Since the webpage is no longer being maintained, this is to be expected. Of the sites I can link to, most appear to contain credible information from academic institutions such as Georgetown University and the University of Virginia.

To briefly sum up my review, a credible college sponsors The Online and Medieval and Classical Library, although the credentials of the site author are not listed. The site is a good source for finding various, well documented, medieval works. However, the site has not been updated since 2001, meaning most of the links to other sites are useless. Furthermore any new translations of the listed works will not be contained on this website. While this website is a good source for translated works, it contain no other resources on medieval literature, and will become more and more outdated with time. In my opinion there are better and more reliable resources on the web.