Evaluation Criteria
- Readability – font, colors, layout
- Audience – who is this written for
- Use of images – do images add to information, are captions clear, too many or too few?
- Engagement – how visually appealing – why or why not
- Links and structure – how do you know where you are – what the context is (if you’ve googled in)? Are there links to related articles within same site, external links, links to additional documentation
- Reliability – who sponsors the site, how are sources identified
| Group 1 Five Colleges – Zilpah P. Grant Banister Papers Look at main page, open a letter from the Letters by Banister, 1823-1874 group, pick one with a transcript and look original and transcript Michgian State University – Civil War |
Group 3 Drexel Scholars Who Served Browse the 2 pages, pick any letter Vassar College – Student Letters |
| Group 2 Bard College – Bard Family Papers Scroll down and select Bard Family Papers, open any letter University of Virginia -Civil War – Henry A. Bitner |
Group 4 St. Lawrence University- Sunderland Family Correspondence Click on Browse Letters, select any letter Louisiana Digital Library – Lafcadio Hearn Correspondence |
Website Evaluation Questions
Imagine you’ve been assigned to write a paper that incorporates information from letters in this online collection.
What on the site made it easy (or hard) it to find information about who wrote the letter and what the letter is about?
What on the site made it easy (or hard) to find the transcript?
If there was cataloging information available, did it make sense? What do you think should be included? Would you rename any of the labels (Creator to Author)
If there are links, are they useful? If there are no links, would the page be better with some?
Any aspects of a website that made it more appealing than other sites?
If there are images, do they add information to the page? If there are no images, would having some help?
Any aspects of a site that made it hard to use?
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