Website 1 http://www.civilwarhome.com/civilwarmedicineintro.htm
“Civil War Medicine Introduction” is a very interesting and informative site. The Civil War was a terrible war that is important for Americans to understand. There isn’t enough time to study all the interesting details about the Civil War at school. This is a good site to be able to go to and learn a lot about the 1860’s including details about health care. The information is presented in a simple, organized and straight forward way. There is a three paragraph introduction to the Civil War Medicine Introduction page. Under that is a good chart with a list of the weblink titles on the left and descriptions of what can be found there on the right. For example, on the left side of the first line of the chart is the highlighted weblink titled “Anesthetics in the Civil War.” On the right side the description starts out “Think that ‘biting the bullet’ was the only way to kill the pain?” The person who has made the website has a nice sense of humor so all the information doesn’t make a person depressed.
This web site is really good for the general public to become better informed about the Civil War and what it was like to live in those times. There are nice black and white line drawings of objects and depictions of people with ambulances of the time for instance. The drawings are well labeled. References for the primary sources are listed under every description. They are usually from the 1800s and no weblink is available. But that makes sense because the purpose of the website is to help people find information about the Civil War that is hard to find on the Internet. The web site is titled “Shotgun’s Home of the American Civil War.” He gives his real name and information about himself.
The source was objective because the web master shows no favoritism towards the North or the South. There are no advertisements and there are no buttons asking for donations.
This website really is available for people to be educated and informed.
Website2 http://www.linecamp.com/museums/americanwest/hubs/
western_women_who_tamed_west/western_women_who_tamed_west.html
This website looked pretty interesting at first but very simple. The title American West Museum Western Women Who Tamed the West made it seem like it would be connected to a museum but it isn’t. The information was interesting but there wasn’t very much information on the subject of western women. Links within the text led to other short descriptions about the American West. The quality of the information is fine in terms of factual but there is very little information and in that way the website is misleading. It’s not a good website for the general public to learn about women in the American West.
Each new page had the same advertisements and there was a button for giving donations. There was a link for drawings or maybe etchings in bronze. I couldn’t connect to that link but there was a nice black and white drawing of an old fashioned horse buggy on the site. There was an advertisement for a book exchange, buying and selling gold and silver, an American western trading post and for an Internet bulletin board for people who wanted to sell and buy items
There were no primary sources available. I think the website was made to for people interested in the American West in order to persuade them to buy something from website.
Website 3 http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/blackhawk/index.html
The weblink goes to a really attractive page titled “The Black Hawk War of 1832 written by James Lewis, Ph.D.” There is a portrait of Black Hawk and underneath we can see Permission: Chicago Historical Society. Everything is referenced on this site and very reliable. This website is links to the Northern Illinois University Library Digitization Project so that primary sources can be accessed with a search function. The primary sources can either be browsed or accessed by what is available without a search, too. Treaties of the USA government with the different tribes can be found. For example, the Treaty with the Kaskaskia, Aug. 13, 1803, 7 Stat. 78. Reprinted in ‘Indian Treaties’ etc.: the information available as primary sources are well referenced and very detailed. The information is easy to understand and well written.
There are links available for maps and images as well as for the primary materials. Related sites can also be accessed. For the Black Hawk site the related sites that can be linked to include an encyclopedia, a data base of the state of Illinois, the Historical Society site and Native American History Sites. This is a very detailed site which is really good for research or for people that are interested in the subject.
Primary sources are easily linked to from the site.
This website is an authentic site for people to learn and become informed.
Website 4 http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/
The Eyewitness to History site is a nice site to browse. And there are links to interesting photos that are primary sources but overall this is not a good research site. The purpose of the site is to showcase the work of Ibis Communications, Inc. a digital publisher of educational programming. The links in the text link to web pages with the Eyewitness to History site and show how the educational DVD’s are organized and how they appear.
This is a good site for browsing but not really worthwhile if you are interested in a deep understanding of history.
There are links to advertisers on this site and it is a site to promote an educational programming product.
Website 5 http://www.historycentral.com/Revolt/causes.html
History Central.com is not a very good site for the serious researcher of history. There are a lot of advertisements on the site. It seems to take a lot of clicks to get anywhere on the site. For example: HistoryCentral.com to America’s Wars to Revolutionary War to Major Events and Battles to Battle of Brandywine 1777; which may be all right on a site that gives a lot of information but on this site the information is sketchy at best. The references are not very detailed for example, “Jefferson's account appears in: Boyd, Julian (ed.), The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol 15 (1958); Hibbert, Christopher, The Days of the French Revolution (1981).” This is the reference for the information on the Battle of Brandywine 1777 page and can’t begin to compare with the carefully referenced information on the http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/ (Website 3) and the http://www.civilwarhome.com (Website 1).
There is a section on Israel but it does not address the fact that Palestine was a nation in existence on the spot where Israel sits. Palesitne had been colonized by Britain. The USA and Britain got together to hand Palestine over to the Zionists who killed Palestinians and literally shoved them out of their homes. I couldn’t find that part of history on the site anywhere. The Zionists are still behaving the same way so the web site seems to clearly be pro-Zionist. http://www.historycentral.com/Israel/1948StateIsraelFounded.html
The site HistoryCentral.com had a lot of advertisements and presented only one view of important Middle East History. There were no links to primary sources. I would not recommend that site to the general public. The site promotes its product “Multi Media History.”
Note. My favorite site was the site on the Civil War, http://www.civilwarhome.com. I would highly recommend this site to anyone interested in the Civil War.
References
American West Museums http://www.linecamp.com/museums/americanwest/hubs/
western_women_who_tamed_west/western_women_who_tamed_west.html
Black Hawk War of 1832 http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/blackhawk/index.html
Eye Witness to History http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/
History Central http://www.historycentral.com/Revolt/causes.html
Shotgun’s Home of the American Civil War http://www.civilwarhome.com/civilwarmedicineintro.htm
