Black Perspectives
The first site I explored from the list of Rosenzweig Prize Recipients was Black Perspectives which was published by the African American Intellectual History Society.
This site was published in 2016, but I feel like it has a bit of a timeless feel to it because it’s simplistic, clean, and modern. It uses mostly neutral colors with pops of red and pictures that tell you what the post is going to be about, which I like. Their menu has clear categories at the top of the screen, and the “Featured Books,” “Author Interviews,” “Roundtables,” and “Resources” pages all have clearly organized and valuable information, but when you click on the “About” page it say’s page can’t be found. This could be either something that over time got lost or accidentally deleted, but not having a page clearly outlining its purpose or mission for me was a bit disappointing because I would like to understand more or their story, which made me realize how important that is to keep in mind when making my own project.
When I clicked on the individual posts, I saw how the tags for the article were organized like a word cloud, something I’ve never seen before on a site that I thought was super cool! The font was a little bit small but not difficult to read, just a preference. I would like to see some more uses of different forms of media, like in their author interviews. I looked at the two most recent interviews, Martha S. Jones and AnneMarie Mingo, and found that their were not audio files or videos to go along with them. I think for my project I would like to utlize more of these different media forms to create a more exciting, creative, and engaging user experience for my audience, especially since the members of the Central Rappahanock Heritage Center want to engage a younger audience.
Gilded Age Plains City
The next site I went to was Gilded Age Plains City. Right off the bat, I love that we’re clearly going for a theme and vibe with this site, but I have to be honest I’m not loving the colors. The contrast, especially, of the dark brown background with the yellow-ish font is not very fun or comfortable to read to me. I do appreciate the thought out general information on the home page of the site. Again, with projects like these I like to find out the story and purpose behind the site because I feel like it creates a more sentimental or warm, engaging, and exciting experience. I want to skim the first few things on a history site like this and be pulled in to want to know more, so I really liked this and would make sure to include it in my project. The one of this website is a bit long, so I would maybe make the one for my project a bit more condensed.
I also really liked that this site had a “Guides & Resources” section in a box on the left side of the home page which listed things like glossaries, timelines, or in general what do these things mean. Sometimes while completeing projects we may forget that most of our audience may be the general public who don’t know or have much prior knowledge about what or who or when the historical topic is. By creating resources for users like this allows to engage and create a better understanding and appreciation of the history for everyone in the audience.
The documents themselves are categorized into newspapers, postcards, legal documents, etc. and when you click on a category you see a list of documents with their title and picture. I clicked on a few of the postcards and most had a larger version of the picture that was seen on the list, the date, sometimes maybe an ID number, what collection it belonged to, and a short description, which can be seen in the 12th Street postcard. I liked the general layout of this sort of site, I think it would be especially useful for some inspiration as the Central Rappahanock Heritage Center want some help with their digital collections and exhibits, but it reminds me a lot of the general uses for Omeka sites and after looking at the copyright, which is 2007-2008, this site might be a little outdated.
Emilie Davis Diaries
When I saw the Emilie Davis Diaries in our course syllabus list I was really intrigued! I wanted to see how a site would showcase simply diaries because I know that the Central Rappahanock Heritage Center certainly has many collections of diaries, so I’m optimistically hoping to get some potential inspiration.
From first glance I liked the color scheme of this site more than the previous. The background is white but the header is a bit beige with some accents throughout the site of brown and light blue. The balance overall between clean and colorful was something I really liked. At the top of the screen is a bunch of numbers that indicate new pages, so new pages from the diary. On a page, the center of the screen has one diary entry that has been trascribed from the originial page that is an image to the right, which when you click on enlarges, which was pretty cool. To the left was the about information along with the search bar and some images of Emilies original diaries. If you scroll all the way to the bottom you can view posts by key words, which is organized in a word cloud like similar to the tags in Black Perspectives, which again I think is really fun. One of the cons of this site is I feel overall the font is pretty small, so maybe not the most user friendly. Overall, I thought this was a really cool way to showcase this kind of historical document!
Jane Addams Papers Project
In the Journal of American History is the Digital History Reviews section and from that section I found the Jane Addams Papers Project. I picked this site because I also know that the Central Rappahannock Heritage Center has a lot of writings from individuals and families, so I wanted to see a take on how to display and share those kinds of historical documents online.
Upon first glance I could tell this was my favorite site so far. It has a great use of colors both neutral and a bit more vibrant, good organization, use of pictures, and well thought out, valuable information. The about information was concise, clear, but I would have liked a little more story telling in there. In terms of displaying their actual collections, from what I could find under the “Jane Addams” tab on the menus were just lists of books, lists of businesses, or if it was photographs it was a link to a collection on another site. Maybe I didn’t understand the intention of the site, but I was a bit disappointed. They did have some videos of other historians or scholars discussing Jane Addams under the “Scholars Corner” tab, but still nothing that I felt like made this site a collection itself of Jane Addams that I or any user could access on that site.
However, I really did like the idea of the “Getting Involved” page because I know that the Central Rappahannock Heritage center is really looking forward to potentially getting some more volunteers! On the Jane Addams site, they list opportunites for interns such as editors or researchers, but I think we could potentially take a similar idea for our project and have a list of things that anyone could help out with and have sign ups done right on the site if possible!
Overall, exploring these different sites left me with some great ideas, and I’m even more exicted now to get working!
