05/17/11

The September 11 Digital Archive

After going through the 9/11 Digital Archive website, I found it pretty easy to use. The moment I saw the homepage it looked very organized. When you read the homepage it gives you a brief description of the website. One strong point of the website is that it explains a few of the many tabs that they have on the website. To me the strongest point is the organization. If I wanted to fine stories, or images, instead of me having to go search all I have to do is click on the Browse tab. To be honest I don’t really think there is any weakness to the website. It has a lot of information that is well organized, the interface is very simple and easy to figure out, overall the website is easy to use.

For future historians the website can be very useful. By going through the website they can obviously learn about the history of 9/11 but they can also learn about the people. With the many stories on the website it can give historians information on how 9/11 affected the people. The website also has a vast amount of images, videos, facts, and many more to help historians learn about 9/11.

05/17/11

Digit-all Archive

From the first second that I went on the 9/11 website, I found it very simple to use. When you land on the homepage, you can see different bookmarks lined up horizontally on the top of the page. These bookmarks truly break down the different sections of the website. As one can see anybody is able to browse, research, or contribute to this site. This is definitely one of the strengths of this site. For example if I want to browse through hundreds of thousands of documents, I can simply click on the browse button. From there one is able to filter out what they want to see based on either images, email, stories, etc. The research portion of the website helps people research archives and other documents about 9/11. It makes everything very simple. Contributing is even easier than anything else! All you have to do is type up, or upload whatever you need to, and you submit it. It can literally take under a minute. Which other website runs like this! The simplicity and ease of the website are definitely its forte.

The simplicity only acts as a negative to people who require aesthetic pleasure from this website. It is very bland and boring, but that  might be the desired theme, since this website is about an extremely tragic event. The biggest negative about the website in my opinion is the validity of what it posted. I am not sure that everything that is posted is true. People are able to submit whatever they like, and I’m sure that if the website gets a complaint they will take something down. However, many stories may be factually incorrect. The search process is also subpar. When you search for certain thing such as ’23rd floor’ you must be very specific. If you write 23 then any result for ’23rd’ would not show up. This is a massive downside to this website, because it is nearly impossible to search through all of its documents. So, for example if one wanted to look for things on a specific floor, it would not be as easy as it seems. Lastly there has been minimal marketing in terms of getting this website to the public. Barely anybody has heard of this website, and that limits the amount of entries submitted to the blog.

In the future historians will know exactly what people thought about the event. They can learn about 9/11 from this website, as well as the public’s reaction. They might be able to view images, videos, audio recordings, email, stories, etc. This website truly makes it easy for anybody to learn about 9/11. Of course this story is told from the American point of view, but it does include numerous facts. Overall, the websites pros outweigh its cons, and this website should be considered a great accomplishment.