3 Digital History Critiques

For my first review I chose the Campus Buildings Historical Tour site. The site is designed for mass consumption i.e. the public and contains several pages detailing the past behind various buildings on both Albany’s current campus as well as sites that the university has used in the past. The pages are static displays of pictures and text with essentially no interactive elements which can limit the interactivity of the site. This means that the entertainment value of the site is near zero and with the limited amount of text means that anyone researching the architecture of the university will have to find additional sources.

Next I chose to review State Street Stories, this site also examines buildings and architecture around State Street in Albany. Compared to the first site State Street has a more appealing visual design than the first although this can be attributed to subjective taste in color schemes. Additionally the site contains a greater amount of information and expands beyond the actual buildings into the design and construction of State street. For the public the site contains the information necessary for a basic understanding of the topic proving the site serves its purpose effectively although for a more detailed university level research additional sources would be needed.

Finally the Invasion of America is a site dedicated to the expansion of the US into the lands of the native inhabitants. Unlike the first two sites Invasion contains an interactive feature, a map that shows the creation of the reservation system and the expansion of European settlers as time progresses. Beyond the map the site also contains a link to a 90 second YouTube video summarizing the thesis of the site. Despite the interactivity this site contains the least amount of content of the three with the map and the video containing no text to reinforce the information. In terms of educating the public the site can reinforce other sites with more detailed information but is other wise a limited resource.