Website Evaluation by Roger Mellen of Brainerd, Kansas: Time, Place, and Memory on the Web

This homemade Website on Brainerd, Kansas is a remarkable presentation of oral history, memories and photographs put together by an amateur historian. Although it avoids easy categorization, as many of this type of personal Web efforts do, it could be classified as an “Electronic Essay,” in contrast to a pure “Archive” or a “Teaching Resource,” although it would have some uses in those areas as well. The Website has also become a “Virtual Community” for people with any connection to Brainerd through the online guestbook. As an amateur history project, the Brainerd site is quite remarkable. As a serious history project, the site is lacking some dimensions that would take it past the homemade status to the point of being high quality scholarship.

The presentation on the Internet is simple yet effective. While technological wizards might fault it for its lack of bells and whistles--it has no flash, no animation or anything pushing the state-of-the-art envelope--its very simplicity makes it attractive and easy to use. With simple navigational aids, the visitor can easily get around the site. Creator Kevin Roe avoids the basic traps that snag most inexperienced Web designers: there is no unnecessary clutter, the site is not full of typographical and other basic errors (while there are a few), and everything is very readable. A search engine for the site would add to its ease of use. Some of the photographs could use a bit of touching up and improved composition, and the use of thumbnail pictures instead of merely hyperlinks to the images would be useful. Roe uses the Webs distribution strengths to communicate his story to an audience that would otherwise have no chance of visiting Brainerd, Kansas. While he does not push the Web as a medium to its limits, he does put it to good use.

Roe makes good use of a large number of secondary sources plus a few primary sources. Further research might have uncovered a few more useful original sources and more interviews would have balanced the narrative a bit better.
It is not always clear who his audience is—who he is trying to communicate his story to--and the narrative lacks precision in that way.

Roe’s description of how this Website began is an interesting story. From the bored reading of a book way off his usual topics to an inquiry into family history to an academic project, the multiple foci reveal themselves in the depth of detail that make the project interesting to a lack of focus which makes it a bit wandering.

As an amateur historian, Roe misses a final step that would make this project more meaningful. He is lacking the context larger historical picture. How does Brainerd fit within the cycle of the rise and fall of Midwest railroad boomtowns? Why did Brainerd refuse to completely die out when other towns did? In his introduction, Roe raises the obvious question of why spend time on this community. His answer, "that getting to know a particular place in all its intimate detail is a good and useful thing, and a process by which one can gain a great deal of respect for a landscape and its complex past and present," does not take us far enough. What does this mean about American or Americans or how our country is evolving? The relationship of Brainerd, Kansas to a larger question of this sort would move this project beyond excellent antiquarianism, which it is, to good, solid history, which it is not.