Week 3 Response by Michael Ibarra

Nielson and Krug say that Internet users don't always act rational in their surfing habits. They don't look at every page, and often click on links that seem to be the best rather than on what are optimal. Nielson and Krug are basically saying, and I agree too, that what the user experiences and how they view web pages are just as important when designing a website. I mean at first, they explain differing points of view, like my view on what a website should be like, or the view of those few who have looked at serious academic web design. So like they said, it is important that when designing a web page, the designer needs to take into account their 'audience' when designing it. This I think is an important and cogent point. I also find a good point in the adage "don't make me think"; in other words, don't confuse the user, or make then work to hard to access the information.

I wish also for a world where history was as popular as Google or Amazon. But of course it is important that even if you have an exemplary website, you need to know who you are trying to reach, and make sure they are being reached. Obviously as the article points out, historians don't get trained in marketing, or public relations. We receive scholarly training. Of course places like Museums are going to have an audience already; for example the museum of El Paso has many great southwestern paintings by artists like Swinnerton, and so anyone interested in his works would automatically know where to go, and bingo, instant audience.

With the web it is different, because it is in many ways endless, there has to be some order or organization to it, which is why search engines showed up, and a good website needs to show up on those search engines; Google, Yahoo, Altavista, and MSN in particular. It is easy to forget this, and focus on the content and design aspects alone, and so you did all your work with no benefit to the web community. Obviously money should never be the focus of a truly academic site with integrity; indeed, in many ways wikipedia.com is superior to sites like the history channel whose purpose is to sell tapes and Cd's. Fact is, regards to wikipedia, I have never come across a historical article that is false, everyone of them with footnotes, and I defy anyone to find such an article; and so there is no money there, simply a genuine and free form of scholarly information, even if it is a little too open for some scholars.

In regards to specifics like server logs, I have some familiarity with a decent amount of websites, when it comes to knowing the terms, and so this information, while useful, is also something with which I am a bit familiar.

Oh boy, that Digital Libraries collection was an interesting read. Here these guys are saying that they had an overabundance of links, and at the same time a certain confusion as to whether they were actual archives, and trying to find prominent ones like American Memory Project, which they did manage to dig up. They use the word 'warning' rather easily, as if to say this is not A-number 1 links, or they are not always what they seem to be.

But it is without a doubt a wonderfully diverse collection, I was particularly looking with the King County database. I tried to look up any photos of of James Marshal Hendrix. So I put that in, the search has no way to search for those words together, so apart from there not being any photos of him, not even in the Black Heritage archive, I was getting whatever pages had James or Hendrix in them. So I suppose it can be said that not all scholarly sites are perfect, and it is these inconsistencies that help point out a real sticking point: There is no general set of guidelines all these websites have to use, so for now, neither a scholar or the average web surfer will know what exactly they are going to get.

You know, I remember reading that historical writing in the past, when it was done by guys who were usually from the upper class, didn't have hardly anything to say about the everyday citizen. You wouldn't find a book from 200 years ago about the history of marriage ceremonies for the lower classes, and yet you could today. But with the proceedings of the Old Bailey, I have to admit I stand corrected (technically). Here, as the article says, is essentially a common people's history. Considering the ratings for shows like NCIS or Law & Order, I can understand why people back then loved to read the proceedings; and boy, there were alot of them, about 100,000 if I remember correctly, over 160 years. I wonder if Jack the Ripper suspects are in there too?


and here is a list of fascinating true historical facts,

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/253986/strange_but_true_historical_facts.html?cat=37