Web Site Evaluation
By Timothy Mays
This is an evaluation of the website titled “The English History and Heritage Guide”, found at http://www.britainexpress.com/History/index.htm, which I accessed most recently on September 8, 2002. I evaluated the site based on its authorship, layout, and content.
To begin
with the first of the above criteria, the site is “designed, written,
and edited,” according to the site’s “About Us” page, “by committed anglophile
David Ross with the invaluable assistance of Barbara Ballard and numerous
volunteer contributors” (1). Ross
lives in Argenta, British Columbia, Canada (2). All of the pages on the site were copyrighted either in 2000
or 2001, although almost none of the historical information on the site seems
likely to change. The target
audience of the site is mainly those who have an interest in the British Isles
in general, and who may be planning to visit them.
The site is not affiliated with any company or parent organization, but is operated entirely by Ross and his associates. It is a commercial site, as evidenced by the fact that it features banner advertisements for travel organizations and the like, one of which flashes rapidly in the manner of a strobe light and is quite distracting. Aside from this, the site is attractively laid-out on plain[comma] white backgrounds, and loads quickly. Some articles include pictures, but most do not. The different areas of the site are easy to find, and an index, which is located on the left side of the screen, ensures that the reader can always find his or her way to any other page on the site without having to return to the home page. There is also a site map for those who need additional help in navigating the site. Something that should be noted is that only about a third of the site concerns itself with history; the remainder provides information about hotels, travel arrangements, noteworthy sights, and other such things as would interest a visitor to the British Isles. In fact, Ross at one point refers to the site as “The Great British online travel magazine” (3). The few off-site links offered are mostly to tourism-oriented sites, which are of little use in historical research.
The site contains around 150 articles about various aspects of the history of England and Wales, ranging from prehistoric times to the 19th century. These are supplemented with a number of timelines, lists of monarchs, and other such materials. The articles are organized into eight sections: Prehistoric Britain, Roman Britain, Anglo-Saxon Era, The Middle Ages, The Tudor Era, Stuart Britain, Georgian Britain, and The Victorian Age. The majority of the articles were written by David Ross, and run from one to three pages in length; a few articles were written by contributors to the site, and are a bit longer. The articles are very well-written and easy to read. The most important omission that I noted was the fact that no sources are cited for any of the information. In one of his articles, Ross makes a reference to the research that he did before writing, but he doesn’t tell what form this research took, nor does he offer any credentials or other information about himself. This obviously limits the usefulness of the site to the serious researcher.
The main thing to remember when reading this site is that it seems to serve much the same purpose as The History Channel; in other words, it provides history in a popular, [easy to read=>easy-to-read] format that almost anyone can appreciate. This limits the depth that any individual article can offer, but at the same time makes the information accessible to nearly any user of the site, not just those with academic inclinations. This site should be taken for what it was meant to be: A place to get a taste of the vast history of Great Britain, and a starting point for further research.
Sources
(1) http://www.britainexpress.com/about_Britain_Express.htm