Web Site Review

Africans in America: America’s Journey Through Slavery. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/) Created and maintained by WGBH PBS Online. Reviewed February 5, 2008.

Africans in America: America’s Journey Through Slavery is created by PBS as a supplement to their six hour public television series which shares the same title. This website covers the history of racial slavery in the United States from its beginnings to its end after the Civil War. It emphasizes the social and economic impacts of slavery. The website contains vast amounts of primary sources as well as background information about the subject. Although the background information is vague and overly simplistic at times the primary sources more than compensate for what it lacks. The content is broken up well into different sections and chunks as to not bore the reader with too much information at once. Moreover, there is no question of the creditability of the content because it was produced by a team that spent years researching the topic. Additionally, the website was established by PBS which is a well-known organization. Adding more credibility, numerous other well-known organizations sponsored the page, including Bankers Trust, the Fannie Mae Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Furthermore, the website gives documentation of all their sources; some of which include the Library of Congress, Harvard University, and many museums. Unfortunately this information is not updated regularly as the site was made specifically for the show and is not kept up now.
This website opens with a splash page, which tells briefly what the website is about. It also lists the sponsors of the site and its correlating television program. The splash page may have benefited if more information was given about the site because there was only one short sentence given. One or two more sentences elaborating on the content of the website would have helped the audience while not overloading the splash page with information. Moreover, placing the sponsors on the splash page may not have been the best idea because the audience automatically recognizes that these organizations may have affected the content of the page. Once the viewer enters the website the homepage is organized quite effectively with the content divided into four major time periods. Each of these time periods linked to a separate page with a short introduction to the time period and three more links, “Narrative”, “Resource Bank”, and “Teacher’s Guide”. The Narrative feature tells the story of each time period, and is very easy to navigate with links to pages relating to concepts covered. These links lead to more information and features such as maps with roll-over information, and pictures that can be enlarged and clicked on for more information about them. Following each link many characteristics remain consistent. One such characteristic is the black PBS tool bar along the top of the page. Also consistent is the Africans in America logo which is located in the upper left hand of each page, which was extremely helpful because it linked back to the homepage. Also the color scheme of red and peach remains the same on each page. Although this is the color scheme the actual content is written in black with a white background which is easy on the audience’s eyes.
It is clear that this webpage was not designed solely for historians. Although historians could find a lot of valuable information on this page it is written in a way that the common public would understand it. Moreover, since this website is a supplement to the PBS television program it is formatted and written in way that all the television viewers would find it relatively easy to use. The website does an exceptional job at portraying the information in a way that both historians and television viewers will benefit from.
I think that it is important that this website was formed as a compliment to the television series because it adds a lot to the series. This website links to primary sources, and delves much more thoroughly into the topic and gives much more detail than a television program could in six hours. It has features such as the interactive map that the series could not have.
Overall this page was easy to navigate, it was organized well, and it gave creditable and accurate information.