History Websites

The four websites visited all represented a broad spectrum of the presentation of history. In representing the past on the internet, we are confronted by the question of how to translate the complexities of history into a syntax that often relies on peppy design and user adaptability to preserve its relevance.

The first website, The Valley of the Shadow, is a primary-source based site for casual and professional historians alike, allowing the user to survey newspaper records, civil government statistics, soldiers records, church records, and other commonly used primary sources relating to several small towns in the Civil War. The main strength of this website lies in its clean indexing of topics, allowing the user to navigate with ease across the main groups of sources. This website, which I found to be highly useful, presents the study of history on the internet as an egalitarian pursuit. In the first place, the main introductory page depicts the portraits a white man, a white woman, and a black man above a small hill town. This seeks to reinforce to the user that this site is a very inclusive approach to the Civil War which will leave no part of society unrepresented.

In contrast, the History Channel’s website seems to be lacking in actual history content. On January 27^th, the center of the main page features upcoming program on a recent UFO phenomena in Texas. In the “Video” portion of the website, the featured videos were mostly video of graphic car accident, ferocious animals, and an ad for a Hyundai Sonata. The “World History” (http://www.history.com/media.do?action=listing&sortBy=1&sortOrder=A&topic=WORLD%20HISTORY) section of the “Video” site mostly featured some video on modern police gear, though it did contain some videos tracing police gear through the ages. The general World History section of the website (http://www.history.com/topics/worldhistory_) was mediocre at best, presenting some stock “Mysteries of the Bible” content which generally reflects the dribble found in the DaVinci Code, and even referring to the post-Roman centuries as the “Dark Ages,” a term I completely abhor. In the “World War II” section of the history site (http://www.history.com/minisites/worldwartwo/), the content was very basic, although it would be a solid background for someone who really did not know anything about the war. I was dissatisfied with the “Key Allied Figures” and “Key Axis Figures” of the website. For the allies, HC failed to mention Marshall Gregori Zhukov, considered the greatest general of the Soviet war effort, or Harry S. Truman, who made the fateful decision to drop the atomic bomb which induced Japanese surrender. On the Axis side, there was no mention of Admiral Yamamoto, the architect of the attack on Pearl Harbor, or Heinz Guderian, the wellspring of the “blitzkrieg” attack. I believe that the History Channel, in this sense, has eschewed presenting either Harry S. Truman or Yamamoto for the sake of preserving a politically correct approach to history which seeks to downplay Japanese involvement in the war. Moreover, the HC channel site is all about luring in users with expressly non-historical content. Very much like TV in that it is designed for mass consumption, doesn’t respect the viewer’s capacity for new. Ultimately, HC sacrifices depth of content for the sake of commercial viability, but you will learn something along the way if you are a novice. Unfortunately, the history channel does not explicitly talk about historical scholarship itself, so by their standards, they want history to come to you.

The Do History Website was on the same level as the Valley of the Shadow site. This site, which unmistakably is a resource for women’s and gender history presents a rape case for not only illustrating the dichotomy of truth in differing historical accounts, but is also concerned with underscoring the disadvantages of women in bygone years. Most of the links on the site to other sites are concerned with women’s history. Unfortunately, the site is messy and unfocused, unlike the Valley site that focused on primary sources that is more cleanly organized. Has a nice little guide to using primary sources in the history toolkit section, this is an overall great site for people just beginning to do history and the example provided is great for understanding how history can be controversial. Overall, the site is not so much concerned with the subject as it is illustrating how history is done.

The National Museum of American History website is a colorful, well-designed site that is user friendly. This site depicts history as a story of objects, as the main page features things like Dorothy’s ruby slippers, a World War II helmet, and a locomotive. All of these artifacts are indeed treasures and do tell the story of America. In addition, the site’s purpose is to persuade viewers to visit the museum itself. The website does this by presenting objects that almost all Americans can identify in some sense with. As a result, this sense of nostalgia personalizes history, and makes you relevant to what the museum is presenting. For the MOAH, history is not just “us,” it is also “you.”