The following analysis is of a website titled, Medieval Sourcebook; edited by Paul Halsall.  It is located at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html.  I formed my analysis based upon the following criteria: the date and year of update, the audience, documentation, appearance/readability, and the degree to which it was made interesting.

                    The Medieval Sourcebook page was last updated on January 8, 2000.  However, the material still seems to be quite useful because it's taken from another time period.  In addition, the page was written to assist students, and is part of a project conducted at Fordham University.  Thus, one can gather that the primary audience is that of college students, and its purpose is instructional.  As far as the basic appearance and layout of the site is concerned, it is fairly simple in nature.  It contains a tan-colored background, and has about three main colors: brown, green, and black.  While these colors give it a somewhat dull appearance, they go along with the ancient nature of the material presented, so the use of color is effective overall. 

The layout consists of a main page and a series of frames on the left side of the page.  The frames lead the reader to such pages as those dealing with sources, texts, a large array of medieval topics, and even maps.  The topics include history of medieval literature, economy, religion and crusades, society, Renaissance, gender, and many others.  The front page includes a very helpful index to the most significant and instructional features of the site.  These features include the Selected Sources, which are for teachers to use, the Full Texts, which include medieval writings, and the Saints' Lives, which detail various "hagiographical" sources.  This page also contains medieval texts written in other languages, such as French and Latin.  Finally, there is also a list of links to medieval music, images, and films.  At the bottom of the front page, there is a guide for how to properly use the Sourcebook, a guide to other medieval internet sites, and the purpose of the Medieval Sourcebook Project, which is to educate students about medieval literature.

                    In addition to its wealth of medieval content, the site is also very easy to read and interpret.  It has a simple layout with frames, as mentioned above, and the guides help the reader find various medieval topics quickly and easily.  The site has few pictures (except for the map/image section), so it downloads quickly.  As a reader who knows very little about medieval literature, this site was helpful and interested for me to read and follow.  This is because each section contains an explanation for what is behind each link.  I wasn't looking for anything in particular, but I was able to find information on certain topics in which we've discussed in class; mainly the geographical and historical contexts of literature.  The site is also very well documented, having [did you count, or where does this figure come from?=>] thousands of sources to back it up.  It even contains information about how to document internet sources.  While most of the material on the page is interesting, the page is more instructional, so there are not many ways in which it can be made entirely appealing.  Overall, it is a very effective page and will probably be helpful when we start our group projects for this course.