The Avalon Project: Historical Website Analysis

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Table of Contents

Introduction
The Avalon project
Technical analysis
Accuracy of documents
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

With the internet revolution spreading to cover the education sector, a number of websites have been created and dedicated to various faculties. History, as a subject, has witnessed the creation of thousands of websites serving as guides for scholars and other interest groups. This essay seeks to analyze one such website, describing its interface and the contents of its database. The website named The Avalon Project:Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy has been selected as the subject site for the purposes of this exercise.

The Avalon project

The website, a project of the Lillian Goldman Law Library Yale Law School, is dedicated to historical and cultural hallmarks, starting 400BCE and has documents of events that happened in the period running up to 2003. The websites home page has the catalogue of documents presented immediately after the header banner. In this catalogue, there are nine categories. These are: Ancient (4000BCE-399), Medieval (400-1399), 15^th Century (1400-1499), 16^th Century (1500-1599), 17^th Century (1600-1699), 18^th Century (1700-1799), 19^th Century (1800-1899), 20^th Century (1900-1999) and 21^st Century (The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy 1).

On the footer is the physical address of the library and links to other administrative pages of the website. Among the prominent tabs on the navigation bar, at the bottom of the page, are links to the Law School and library.

Technical analysis

The technical aspects of the website can be analyzed by considering the readability, performance and site organization. These criteria are discussed below.

Readability

The font type used in the entire website is easy to read and is consistent. The font size is also easy on the eye and anyone with normal vision can go through the text without strain. However, the lines, which run from one side of the screen to the other, negatively affect the level of concentration of the reader. It would be appropriate for the creators of the website to consider shortening the lines in order to reduce the neck strain coming from moving the eyes from one extreme to the other.

Performance

Each of the websites pages loads easily even in slow internet connections. This helps make the website user-friendly and encourages the user to go through as many pages as possible on a single visit.

Site organization

The website is also devoid of clutter with the different navigation tools well laid out on a page. The global navigation bar is consistent throughout the various pages making it easy for the user to easily move from section to the other without getting lost.

Content analysis

In order to complete the analysis of the website five key items that pertain to the content need to be evaluated. These are: the accuracy, authority, currency, objectivity and coverage of documents.

Accuracy of documents

The documents contained in the database of the website have been written by professionals in the respective fields most of whom maintained a high degree of accuracy in their initial research. These writers have the necessary academic and professional experience needed to produce material that is regarded as scholarly. In this regard, anything they publish on a particular topic will be received as credible and starting point to shape fresh discussions. The documents were produced to help students and other researchers in their studies and scholarly duties. In order to ascertain accuracy, the distinction between Webmaster and author has been made clear by attaching the names of the authors and the original media of publication to each article.

Authority

The Yale Law School is a creditable institution of learning, when it comes to studies on law. Any academic documents published on the schools website can be treated as scholarly. Even though the qualifications of the writers of the various articles and papers on the website are not listed, their names are provided and a quick search on the internet can yield all their professional information. The website in current review assumes the structure of a typical library and anyone going through it gets the same experience as visiting a physical library.

Objectivity

The primary goal and objective of the website is to provide material that other scholars can reference to, when doing their own independent researches. In the event that opinions are presented in an article, they come from a scholarly base, and they are intended at shaping future discussion. The material also makes for a good read for anyone that is interested in historical studies. As a guarantee of the objectivity of the website, no advertisements are carried on any of the pages neither are their links to external commercial websites. In addition, there are no charges for accessing any of the documents on the website. This clearly shows that the website was created for academic purposes and not commercial grounds as would have been the case if the creators had different objectives.

Currency

The Avalon Project website is not a news website. Therefore, the articles carried there are not updated on a daily basis as would have been the case if it was dealing with information that changes every day. However, the collection of articles on the website is constantly updated with new documents being added on a regular basis. The website intends to be the go-to place for information on historical happenings. The variety and age of records on its database clearly show that it meets this objective. The links on each and every page of the website work effectively and no dead links were experienced in the evaluation. This shows that the website is well managed with the links getting updated on a regular basis.

Coverage

The website was created for use by individuals that are not necessarily technologically-savvy. These are persons who know how to use the internet and have other basic document manipulation skills. However, their knowledge does not extend to specialized software administration. This is shown by the fact that the website does not need special software to access any information and, therefore, users cannot fail to access any of the pages if they do not have particular software. The interface of the website is also user-friendly, with the links connecting directly to the specific page that they are labeled for.

Conclusion

This project had set out to analyze a history website. The site titled the Avalon Project was selected for the analysis and its various components, from the structure to the content, were given a critical look. If the website was to be given a rating based on this analysis, it would score highly with its only weakness being the length of the lines. It should be noted that this analysis focused on the major elements of the website and a page-by-page evaluation should be conducted for an exhaustive analysis.

Works Cited

The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy 2012. Web.

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