Colonial Williamsburg, People of Williamsburg
http://www.history.org/Almanack/people/index.cfm
Created and maintained by The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
January 29, 2013
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has put together a list of people, who have all at one point in their lives spent some time in Colonial Williamsburg. The list comprises people from all walks of life, from slaves to prominent members of the city.
This website creators have an excellent grasp of the era in which these people that are profiled existed. The stories of these people are told from a narrative and factual way. The selection of people chosen may play a little to the social history point of view aspect in that all classes are represented, but the biographies themselves show no bias. The presentation of these individuals are very well written and done in a way that people of all ages can read and understand the material being presented. Also, the pictures of the actors portraying the individuals are a great touch. It conveyed they idea of history being alive and not just words on a page.
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation employs a large amount of professional historians to ensure that the history they convey is sound. As well, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation does research to answer any unique questions posed to it by visitors to both the website and the grounds. This ensures that the history stays very current. Both of these factors lead to a very up to date as well as accurate view on the people portrayed on this website.
What impressed me most about this website was not only it’s content and organization, but also its ease of use. I’m not a master of technology by any means, but navigating this website was refreshingly easy. The use of sidebars to organize the profiles by category makes navigation especially easy. As well, if the reader is interested in other subjects pertaining to the person they are reading about there are links to other areas to also read about. This encourages further reading on subjects the reading might find especially interesting.
As stated earlier, the ease of usage on this site is what really grabbed my attention. Although the specific details of the people depicted on this site could easily be put into a book or a short film, the links to other content related to the person being read about is, again, an important point. Also, the links to other related content aren’t just limited to other web pages for more reading. There is related multimedia in the form of video and slideshows as well as interactive material.
Digital and Urban History 