The first website I will be reviewing in this exciting blog post is http://gildedage.unl.edu/. In this website about Gilded Age murder, there are some key likes and dislikes. The website is easy to navigate, and I always love when they have the personalization of the “About Me” page. However, I have a specific vendetta against that shade of red that they made their menu because it is an eyesore against the black background. I definitely like the idea of their interactive map, but it seems dated, and it has more potential to give more information besides addresses. By looking at the map, I do not see how it relates to murders. The website itself was not very engaging, as a lot of it just read like an uploaded book. I felt like it did not take advantage of the platform as well as it could, or is just dated material. I would probably not use inspiration from this website for our project. Sorry, Gilded Age murder :(.
https://davisdiaries.villanova.edu/january_1-3_1863/ was the next website I looked at. I liked this one a lot better; it was much more concise, as it only presented a few diary entries per page, so it looked more engaging than the information dumps from the other website. With this website, a page of a diary entry was transcribed per page, with an accompanying image of the original page on the side. It was very easy to navigate, but, to be fair, the premise of this website was much more simple than ours will likely be. Their website was a collection of transcribed diary entries, and works very well for this purpose. I also really liked that the original diary pages accompanied each entry, which made it more engaging and connected to the original source material. As someone who is really only familiar with WordPress, I am impressed with how they utilized the website format and put so much on the sides of the content, which is something that I feel could be useful for our project. I am unsure of when it was created due to its lack of tools, but its lack of complexity helps preserve the website’s content.
The last website I will discuss is http://gtts.oasis.unc.edu/index.html. This one clearly shows that it was made in 2010, as its interactive map no longer functions, making the Browse function irrelevant. Bummer. I did like its special features, and I like how they linked in other forms of media (like videos) to make the content feel more than just a book that’s been uploaded (no offense to Gilded Age Media). One thing that I also really love is the Lesson Plan section, as it gives the website more visibility and usage in classrooms. While I do not think that is appropriate for our project, I would love to add a “Learn More” section discussing the other trailblazers in the mural, and further sources they can use to explore the lives of these great women.
I totally agree about the Gilded Age website! So cool in a lot of ways, but just not quite there. And I love the idea of some kind of “learn more” tab on our website… Let’s make that happen!