Comparing Websites: The Reformation

The four history websites that I have chosen focus on the history of the Reformation in Europe. Three are in English, and one is in French – I thought it would be interesting to compare American websites and European ones. Finding websites that actually focus on that history is not as easy as I thought it would be. What one mostly finds when looking up “history of the reformation website” or something similar, are websites offering primary sources.

So, here are a few observations and comments:

I. Memo: La Reforme

It is a very "teaching" website; lots of information on the Reformation, basic ones mostly, but that gives readers a good overview on the subject. The hyperlinks can be located in odd places (and do not always work), but most of them are interesting ones that enables the reader to get some information about bordering subjects (giving the opportunity to look at a context in a more global way). It covers a variety of aspects on the subject of the Reformation.
It has pictures, maps.
Constructed like a book, with different chapters and sub-chapters. It enables the reader to either read everything at once, or select a subject they want to focus on.


II. The Reformation Page

This website is on the same subject (of course), but offers a different type of data.
It is made of lots of different links, most of them point to primary sources. There is some biographical information also, but this is not the majority data.
The design of the website is very basic, and not very easy to navigate. It is a long document, listing all kind of different subject or people; the color or the design has nothing appealing. There is also nothing homogeneous about this website, as it mostly redirects people to other sites where they have primary sources or other info.


III. The Crawford Reformation Guide

There are some texts within the website, but it also focuses a lot of links.
Example of Heinrich Bullinger, which has his own essay on the website itself (source from the Swiss Historic Lexicon - a reference for Swiss historians).
Then, there are many links to a website called "forerunner", which - to me - does not seem particularly historical (after further investigation, it seems to be a Christians website, publishing articles from students around the world). So I would not be sure of the quality of the documents.
Or going to the website of the Irish Presbyterian website will not really help in a historical approach.

The design, however, is not very appealing. It is kind of "old'-fashion looking" for a website, and some of the links do not exist anymore. The website has probably not been updated for quite some time. As some kind of educational website, it surely should be more "attractive" and not look so old-dated. Unfortunately, it does not really encourage surfing at the first look, even though they do have interesting things around.


IV. History World: The Reformation

The website covers the process of the Reformation over the centuries and also presents it in some major countries in Europe.
This last website is very “modern” looking, well organized and well structured. Like the Memo website, this one is constructed in different chapters and sub-chapters, but those are accessible from a menu on the left, which makes it very easy to use and know where one is, and how to quickly access another theme. The downfall is that each chapter stands on one single page, which can make them rather long (even though there is a handy “up to top of page” button.


A few thoughts:
Maybe it is because it is an "old" subject ;-) but I must say that few of those websites had a very user-friendly and interesting design interface. The Memo website was rather good, even though it still has a few glitches, and the navigation or change of chapters is not always simple. Those first three websites clearly had nothing revolutionizing. The historyworld.net was surely the most modern and user-friendly designed. Without talking content (because it is not my intent here to thoroughly discuss the academic content of those websites), it would be the best of the four. I would even say that the other websites should work towards that kind of interface.
I know it is not always that way, and it can change depending on the type of subjects, but it made me wonder how historians and scholars can try to better combine interesting and serious information with an appealing interface. Of course, history websites should not become like tv-adds and try to attract people with funny, weird, or very empty, messages or "stories". But it also should not mean for them to remain in the area they are talking about... The internet and website designing have made so much progress in the past decade, that history websites should not grow to become the "prehistoric websites" of the web. Adapting to new technologies and designs might actually encourage more people to visit, read and use them. Even though as I am writing those lines, I cannot help but wonder how prevalent history-websites should or can become. How could they be used, structured or designed? What should be their primary use? Should they maybe try to bring another type of information and view point than the nowadays so common Wikipedia? An example of more thorough and academic work that would yet still appeal to a general public?