These two projects are quite different. It is hard to find any weaknesses in DoHistory or WH Sources, except that they and the other projects on the CHNM site ought to have more revealing and clear titles–that seems to me the signal weakness in the suite of projects as a group. They are all excellent, but their titles can be confusing and too generic. It might be a function of titles chosen before the sites were fully developed in content and scope. DoHistory, for example, might have been envisioned to house a future project along the lines of the Martha Ballard Diary resources, but it is alone in the category now, so it should have its own title, or attach a subtitle. The site is so remarkable an example of a unique digital history resource that its title should not be generic, because people can’t easily find it. It does come up on a search, but not on a browse of chnm. (More on DoHistory below). On the other hand, World History Sources, which I visited on an earlier occasion, used to be a list like a WH version of the Webography resource collection (annotated rather than reviewed, I recall). Now it could be “Historical Thinking Matters,” or “History Matters,” or “DoHistory.” Nothing is distinctively different enough about these titles. “World History Sources” has an elegantly simple interface on the opening page–I LOVE the jewel-like blue glass globe on white ground as logo, and the white space on the page is very effective. The entry page leads the user into four departments, but going to one, the others are still on an unobtrusive line with the logo. The consistent use of hotlinked text and orange Go! buttons is efficient, and is used around the chnm history sites to good effect generally. The first of the four depts of “WHS”, appropriately, gives the user access to either regional (for geography/cultures courses) or chronological (using the National Standards for History eras structure) division, reflecting the way these courses are taught in middle and high school. These link to what used to be all I knew of WHS–an annotated list of web sites on WH. The WHS has become a thorough and outstanding set of master classes by world historians and master teachers on using sources, with texts, images, audio, and video clips keyed to the questions for interrogating the sources. These pages are rich resources in themselves, with the “You Be the Historian” modules to go with them (which are NOT simple), and additional resources. the last of the four sections (Resources, Unpacking Evidence, Analyzing documents, and Teaching Sources) are model lessons by teachers, mostly college & AP WH. I honestly don’t see any weaknesses in this collection, except that it is not as widely known a resource as it ought to be.
Do History, is, as stated above, is a unique model of why digital history is worth the effort. Ordinarily, we would be able to read the book by Laurel Ulrich, and perhaps get information on the diary, the process, and the auxilliary archival material in an introduction by the author. Instead, we have the primary source, tools for understanding it, the ability to interpret it on our own, how to read its handwriting, the context of scripts at the time, literacy, a tour of the town, other artifacts and documents from the place, and clips from the film, along with accounts of that process. It is a 360 degree history-making experience. Again, asking what the weaknesses of this site are is like asking what’s wrong with a hand-made quilt you inherited from your grandmother. As stated above, the name DoHistory for the site does not DO it justice.