Gilded Age Plains City

What Works: Extensive, thorough history of the Sheedy Murder Trial.
What Doesn’t: Unclear site title, “Gilded Age Plains City” doesn’t really tell me anything about the content of the cite.
Taking: About, FAQ and Comments concepts, having an easy to access spot with information about the project itself. “Why and how is this being created?”
Avoiding: The coloring, massive blocks of text, unclear formatting and naming systems, hidden bibliography / source list
Created: 2007-2008, and it’s clear. Even though a message is popping up at the top that says “this version of the site was created in 2025,” it’s very clearly outdated.
Sources: A number of primary sources, listed in the Archive of Documents, which is not clearly labeled or very easy to access.

The Emilíe Davis Diaries

What Works: Navigation is well thought out for something as large and text heavy as a diary. Colors are simple.
What Doesn’t: Contrast is really low in some spaces, Massive blank spaces on the right side while information is kind of crammed in on the other.
Taking: Search, Original documents (PDF or image versions) and transcriptions
Avoiding: Spacing issues, accessibility issues.
Created: Created in 2012, and it does kind of show. Its less egregious here, but the design is still clearly a bit outdated, and in some ways inaccessible. A lot of the links present do not work.
Sources: It seems like the only sources used were the three diaries of Emilíe Davis, as nothing else is cited anywhere on the cite, if anything else is cited, it is not clear, and there is not dedicated bibliography.

100 Ballads

What works: I LOVE this site, mostly just because it covers something that’s really interesting to me. The site itself is simple and well organized, with each (song) entry being tagged thoroughly. Each ballad has the broadside itself, an audio file, and extensive history about each.
What Doesn’t: Massive, unorganized walls of text on many of the pages, while not necessarily a glaring problem, can be kind of intimidating and turn viewers away.
Taking: Embedded audio files! We might (or have musically gifted friends) record a number of the songs written for Devil-Goat Day over the years. This would be a good reference for how to do that.
Avoiding: Massive walls of text!
Created: 2023-2024, frankly, this is recent enough to not really be able to tell how dated it is. The site is simple, and looks good, as far as I am aware, none of the links are dead either!
Sources: All sources used are cited in footnotes at the bottom of each page (quite a scroll on some pages!)

Jane Addams Paper Project

Okay, this one may have been user error, but I had a kind of hard time finding things. There are two separate main parts of this website, the Papers Project, and the Digital Edition. The separation of these, and the vast amount of information on each one made this project kind of intimidating to look at. If a viewer doesn’t know exactly what they’re looking for going in, they may struggle to find anything at all.

What works: For all its issues, it is well organized (I think, frankly I got overwhelmed and stopped looking.)
What Doesn’t: Honestly, too much information housed on one website, even just a little more separation would have helped. There’s also a lot published that has very little other information attached too it, filling up the site with a lot of nothing.
Taking: Basic design, maybe.
Avoiding: … most of it? I will admit, I might be being a bit harsh on this one, but at a first glance, without having something specific that I’m looking for, I find this site overwhelming and uninviting. Even if I wanted to learn more about Jane Addams (and I do, she seems like she may have been a swell gal), I would not choose this site to learn about her.
Created: I may just be missing it, but I can not find a date on this one.
Sources: Mostly primary source, uploaded to the site and then categorized, tagged, etc.