The University of Houston has a Digital History site that covers “The First Americans” to “The 21st Century.” Each time period has sub sections containing an overview and related documents. There are also sections that cover people, events, music, and film of that time period. Despite appearing a bit dated the website contains good information and can be used as a teaching resource or a resource for research in general.

Content

The types of primary sources on this website are images and documents. Secondary sources provided by the website are textbook overviews, biographies and information on entertainment of the time such as music and film. The sources are identified, and links are also provided for some sources such as music from the 1920s. The subject material covered on this website about the 1920s is based around the sources. There is a section “for teachers”, links to more information and quizzes.

Creators

The Digital History website was created through the University of Houston by a professor and their students. While there are surely many creators to credit, the website is suffering a server error, prohibiting access to the portion of the website where credit is given to them.

Search Methods

Locating information on this website is significantly easy. The time periods are sectioned off on the left side of the website, and the subcategories of those time periods are sectioned off on top of the textbox. The website’s format is clearly organized making it easy to follow. One could find the sources their research required on this website without difficulties.

Trustworthiness

The latest website update seemed to be in 2021, which is fairly recent. Despite its recent update the site looks somewhat outdated. However, due to the fact that the website is a University Digital History Project, it’s rated highly in trustworthiness.

Usefulness for 1920s Research

Overall, this website proves useful to research on the 1920s. Primary and secondary sources from the era are more or less in one place, thus one would not have to browse through multiple other sites for the same information. It’s all in one place. Additionally, not every website offers teaching materials. Education in addition to research can be navigated with ease through the resources provided. 

Michelle Steidle

Michelle Steidle is a History Major at Ramapo College, graduating with the Class of 2023. She enjoys historical research, long walks on the beach, and a good joke.

The database that is provided by the New York Central Historical society is a fairly recent addition to the society itself. The database is powered using the service Omeka, which is a well known and established database system used by many other historical groups. Therefore, if you’ve used a database that is Omeka based before, this one will be immediately recognizable to you. The database is searchable via different modes depending on what you’re looking for. There is a table of contents but it does only cover broad aspects of the different aspects of the society. If you do not see what you’re looking for there is an advanced search option that allows you to search via different fields. There are also multiple help pages in order to steer you in the right direction. The site itself loads quickly and lacks ads, providing a clear interface to work with. The database itself is also regularly updated with new content as the members are able to upload them. 

The content that is available on the website is mainly primary sources. Most of which are photographs that have been cataloged based on what’s in them. There are other formats available, but are limited. This database is mainly for photos, and is useful to historians that are trying to aim for historical accuracy in projects. As for secondary sources, the society runs a couple magazines and columns where they will provide secondary accounts of events and background on different primary sources in their collection. While the people that are writing these are not always “historians” by their main job, they are usually well versed people on the subject of the society and are extremely dedicated to the craft and getting things as accurate as possible, which is where the photographic database is important. This can take away some trust in the secondary sources, since they are not by a historian’s standard of the term “peer reviewed”, but since the evidence that is being provided is free for anyone to look at and interpret, you can also draw your own conclusions. The magazine that is published by the society is normally only available to subscribers and members however. 

The NYCSHS archive system is useful as a source to the 1920s. The company that it mainly follows, was one of the largest railroads in the world at that point in time, and therefore was present for many of the monopoly-breaking, regulation changing, and notable strikes that occurred in this decade. This archive also has a very large catalog of photos, which allows for a literal insight into what the average railroad would look like in this era and get a better image in the mind of who is searching for 1920’s info on what the average person would be seeing or using in this timeframe.

gregk

Gregory Kruimer is currently enrolled in his senior year at Ramapo College as a History major.

The website, The 1920s in History, is categorized into several sections of history relating to the 1920s that are accessible to the user. Each category has a in-depth history written on the webpage along with hyperlinks within the text that lead the user to related information that was mentioned in the initial text. The homepage describes the site as a way to learn of the tremendous progress made within the 1920s as well as what it was like to live during the decade; it is quoted as “a historical snapshot of life in the 1920s.”

Creator

The creator of this site can be found under the “About Us” tab, which leads to a page with information about Robert Scott, who is listed as the sole contributor to the website. His interest in this decade is said to be responsible in the making of this website; he initially wanted to share his personal collection of research he gathered throughout the years.

On the “About Us” tab, there is also a link that leads the user to a site map, which appears to be a master list of all the hyperlinked sites and tabs.

Search Methods

From a surface level perspective, the website does not seem to be incredibly hard to navigate or search. The categorized tabs on the left margin of the website offer a quick way to visit themed posts on portions of history. The site lacks a search bar, which makes it difficult for a user to find specific terms or words within the articles posted. If someone were interested in searching a specific term, they would have to go through the tabs instead of being able to enter the term into a search bar. This makes searching more difficult as the user does not have a way to prioritize terms and searches.

That being said, the categorized tabs paired with the hyperlinked pages within the articles do add to the search experience. It is similar to how Wikipedia has set up their website; organized, specialized pages with highlighted words that lead the user to another page for additional research and understanding.

Trustworthiness

As with any site, the trustworthiness of this site is not exactly perfect. It does not appear to be peer-reviewed or fact-checked; the creator himself stated it is his personal collection uploaded to the site along with contextual information.

At the end of each post, Scott does include a bibliography-eqsue portion dedicated to sources, though it does not appear to be related to the information within the text. They are links that lead the user to primary sources but also other posts from the website, which complicates the process of finding Scott’s sources for the information he puts on his site.

Usefulness

The website does seem to be very useful in discovering information about the 1920s, but the lack of fact-checking and evidence makes it hard to determine the accuracy of what is presented to the user. Some links and pictures lead the user to commercial sites such as Amazon, which also muddles the research process. There does not seem to be any other contributors to the site, nor does there seem to be verified primary sources. If the user’s intention is to feed a curiosity on the 1920s, then this site may be useful to them in discovering new information. However, if the intention is to use this site as a resourced for academic information, further research would need to be done in order to verify the text written on the site which renders the site to not be useful to the user.

Sarah Grider

Sarah Grider is a student of the 2021 Spring Discovering Digital History class at the Ramapo College of New Jersey. She is currently studying History and Museum & Exhibition Studies. She is an editorial assistant for the Jane Addams Papers Project.

The first thing I notice as soon as I log on this site are the colors. The colors are very vibrant however the photos are very old school mostly in black and white. This website is very easy to navigate moving from one topic to the other or in my case looking for more information on the same topic. You can navigate around to articles and videos on the information you want. Furthermore, the site gives you an abundance of social media navigated by them. This website also has a credit section where you can find the producer, writer, editor, narrator, director of photography etc… This website also has a schedule that shows you times that the American Experience that is a local tv channel that shows you videos of historical events. You can also shop on the PBS website; they have historic videos and books, you can also make donations to the website. 

After telling you a little about the website I would like to talk more about the article I searched and the information gathered from the website. As we all know, not all websites are trustworthy or give information you can comprehend easily. So today we will be looking at factors that make this article comparable like; organization, clear purpose does the article have any videos or pictures that can open.

The beginning of the article has a thirty seconds short trailer about the crash of the stock market in 1929. It was said that before the crash people were making so much money off the market and that day just seconds after the crash the entire world started to panic. After the video that gave a little insight of what the article will present. The article started off by giving a timeline of  when it was aired the airing date was October 22nd 2010. The first three paragraphs taught me a great leath about how the stock market was formulated and how it was made public to the less fortunate people. The background information gave me a great knowledge of what the stock market was and how it made the rich richer and also how they manipulated the market at times. 

The other four paragraphs went on to tell us about how those people lost all their money in a matter of seconds one of those people was Micheal Meehan. Micheal was making millions from the stock market before it crashed, also he was the person that manipulated the stock market that made RCA go from $2.50 a share which skyrocketed to $500 dollars a share. So far all information that I have read from this article has proven to be truthful and it has been an easy read. The information is not clustered or is over informed in all this article has been a good read and with just one paragraph left this article has proven to be useful due to information I have learned. 

The final two paragraphs went on to talk about the return of the stock market and that the stock market is a very safe place to invest your money once again. Furthermore within the last paragraph the author recommends that you watch a film that is provided by the website of people that had lost all their money during the stock market crash. This was a great way for them to transition from them giving us knowledgeable information, to trying to sell a DVD. Which also gives us a little insight into people’s lives and other information about what happened in the crash of 1929. 

Furthermore, at the end of the article the website gives you a features which gives you other things that took place in the 1920’s and also other things that had to do with the crash of the stock market. Just below that the website tries to sell books that they think you might like. And a little below that they have a stay in touch section where you can put your information in so they can stay in touch with you by sending you emails about different posts and different books they might have in stock that you’ll like. At the end of the article they have different sponserces and different support groups along with their contact information. All together i think this website was amazing and i will definitely recommend it to anyone and surely return for personal use