After reviewing the four recommended sites, I thought I’d choose the Do-History site to evaluate. I was comfortable with the time period and characters and its stories; the voices of midwife Mary Ballard and narrator/editor Laura Thatcher Ulrich seemed personal. My undergraduate history background contained a fair amount of Colonial and Revolutionary New England history and I’ve worked professionally with objects from this time period so it was fascinating to see a familiar reference come to life in something other than the imagination. The web site added depth to previous knowledge, was easy to navigate through, enjoyable to read, and visually appealing, and provided sensationalism in the form of an 18th Century rape case. Also the link to purchase the book and PBS video are available but unobtrusive. Most useful is the well constructed Archives, with links to a variety of insightful sources and contextual information. I also enjoyed the complexities of the Valley of the Shadow site and the variety of points of view found in the letters, diaries, and newspaper exerts. The Valley site was like a large novel. I spend hours immersed in it but while it was great fun and compelling, by the end I was too tired to analyze it or to go back to review it for this assignment. I would happily recommend both these sites. I found the Midwestern farm town site of Brainerd, Kansas the least appealing as it appeared alien and flat. The photos were marginally interesting but the map lacked links to the images and text. Overall that site was a ho-hum snooze.
When I began to write the evaluation though, I kept coming back to my reaction to the National Geographic: Remembering Pearl Harbor I was put off by National Geographic’s presentation from the very beginning; the index page of their "Pearl Harbor Supersite” is a turnoff with a depressing gray background color. A sepia tone would have lent a more historical overtone or a modeled medium blue would have given a more “navy” like appearance. It was surprised given National Geographic’s reputation in visual presentations. The obnoxious sponsor banner, flashing contest come-on, and annoying advertisements links on society’s left half of the page detracted from the slick "Attack map/timeline", survivor memory book, and "History" with its lesson plans and resource links. The blatant commercialism reduced significantly the overall authoritative feel of the site. The impreesion was that the the history side was there to add credibility to the books, videos, and other products for sale. Advertising was prevalent not just on the index page but throughout the introductory secondary pages. For example about 1/3 of the “Beyond the Movie” page linked to related product sales for the 2001 Touchstone movie and the multimedia map include ad banner across the bottom and took up about 1/6 of the screen.
The “Society” side of the index page mostly provided links to sales to products. The links to the video sales for “Beyond the Movie” and the Ballard video on the legacy to Pearl Harbor had errors although they did lead you to purchase sites. The movie trailer link at the bottom of the screen and on the “Beyond the Movies” page worked just fine in case one possibly missed the Touchstone movie. Since the movie was supposedly fiction based on reality, the most interesting links for the “Beyond the Movie” section were the “Real Stories”, “Real People” and “Real Events” which provided contextual background about the actual individuals and events. There was also a section on the making of the movie. While this section was interesting, it could have been enhanced with oral histories and historic film for the events section.
While the narration later in “Remembering Pearl Harbor Attack Map” was acceptable (factual without being emotional), the music for the introductory screen was tuneless and awful. Fortunately, you can turn the music off before it grates on the ears and nerves. Again the best part was hidden in the links. In the multimedia map section the “full story” page links as worthwhile but I would have liked a few more images with the text. The timeline/chronology of the attack provides some limited context as does the Pearl Harbor timeline in the Resource section and the timeline for World War II. You can find links to Roosevelt’s "Address to the Nation" and "Declaration of War" buried in the Resource section rather than on a more prominent space on the site.
The memory book provides a place for the community to participate. Because it is unedited there is a variety of both interesting as well as pedantic but it is obviously a popular device with the public and can be viewed as a type of resource; it does provide some E-mail links to authors and survivors but little that is new or substantial.
In addition to the "Timelines in the History" section of the site there is also page called “Resources” which includes a chart of the ships and planes at participating in the attack. The information provided a lot of detail about ship/plane specifications, crew size, their location during the attack and the participating ship/plane function in the attack but would have been much more eyecatching with images or links to images where possible. Links to the map under “Location” would also have aided to the flow of the site as well as the education of the audience.
The "resources and links" section provided on-line links to syllabi and other teaching resources and should be considered one of the site’s assets even with their heavy emphasize on geography and other National Geographic sites. There are also links to other online sites, for example the National Park Service’s web site on the USS Arizona and the BBC site: Pearl Harbor: A Rude Awakening.
This web site is not currently being promoted on the Geographic’s home page but can be reached through their index under History. I think this site is a mixture of what is good and bad about historic event web sites. While it has a good variety of genre as listed on the JAH & History Matters Review Guidelines, the presentation in less than stellar. The scholarship was acceptable for a general public audience though not of any real depth for a historian. Missing were discussions on potential reasons for the attack or a history of Japanese-American relations, and there was nothing speculating on whether the government knew or had possible warning that an attack was imminent. There were also no links to academic sites posing such issues or debates. Given that the site’s likely audience was probably a mix of school age moviegoers and World War II veterans, the presentation probably was satisfactory for its target audience. My disappointment stemmed from the expectations I had for this publisher and in the site’s mediocre organization and design. This site could easily have been improved with better use of archival film footage, historic images, audio oral history links and the suppression of horribly distracting, obtrusive advertising.