Examples and Resources

• general resources on computing, web design, and the like

—general principles and practices (from this site)
—techniques and technology: Hampshire College supports Dreamweaver authoring software. Some tips from Janel Jorda, Manager of Internet Development

—Hampshire Library guide to use of the Web. Examine the criteria for evaluation of web sources: Can your site meet these standards?

• specific examples

—Alexander von Humboldt—Networks of Knowledge : This site, designed to accompany an exhibition in 1999, is complex in its design but simple in its workings. Although it includes text, images, and even sound files (down to recordings of nocturnal insect songs and waves breaking), it loads easily. Note how links enable it to tell a story.

—ERIC (English Renaissance In Context) is a project undertaken by the University of Pennsylvania with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities. It has two notable features: "tutorials" designed to introduce both Shakespeare studies and the history of the early modern book, and a database of primary sources.
Pay attention in particular to the tutorial: Although one might quibble about some details of design and function, it is very effective. For example, if you took the text and reproduced it in print form, you would almost think that you had a superficial work in front of you. But in the proper context and with the proper illustrations (which moreover take advantage of sophisticated software), the effect is striking. You will not attempt anything this ambitious, of course, but if you can grasp and apply the principles, you can build something very good.

Take a look at these sites designed by students in European history courses at Mount Holyoke College taught by my colleague, Bob Schwartz. In these cases, the design of a site or CD-ROM was the principal outcome of the course, so these results are more extensive than anything you will be expected to produce, but as recommended above, imitate the principles.

• You might start by looking at two brief press reports on his course, "Frankenstein Meets Multimedia" (College St. Journal [Mt. Holyoke]; Chronicle of Higher Education).

full sites:

• The France of Victor Hugo. "Les Mis" and Les Media: Realities and Representations of France in Les Misérables
• The Industrial Revolution and the Railway System
• Interpreting Nature: Environmental Thinking in Europe from the Seventeenth Century to the Present

and this one, designed by Professor Schwartz himself, on the autobiography of an 18th-century peasant author (although set in a later era than our course, many of the issues are the same):

• " Brief Encounters of the  Numerical Kind
Or,
French History Meets (Some) Statistics
A compelling story in three chapters in which Exploratory Data Analysis is deployed to resolve the question:
Can a laudatory biography of an eighteenth-century French farmer,
written by his adoring son, shed any light at all on the real lives of French peasants?"


That said, you can learn from the general principles that they embody (and note that you need not deem all aspects worthy of imitation; think for yourselves!):

• How does the top page introduce the fundamental topics or categories?
• What is the relation between:

—image and text?
—explanatory text, documents, external links?