The Western Reserve Historical Society is an institution dedicated to preserving and disseminating the history of Northeast Ohio, specifically in the region formerly known as the Connecticut Western Reserve. The WRHS website features a wide variety of materials. Visitors will find in depth previews of all of their current exhibitions, searchable catalogs for the museums and library, educational materials, as well as the standard visitor information one would expect to find on the website of a public cultural institution. The rubric for this review is based on the Rating System for Evaluating Public History Websites established by Debra DeRuyver, Jennifer Evans, James Melzer, and Emma Wilmer and published by the National Council for Public History.
It is unfortunate that the first thing one notices when arriving at www.wrhs.org is the rather unprofessional visual theme and color selections. It seems that the site designers were attempting to give the site a 1950s modern feel, which does not mesh with the institution's academic and scholarly subject matter. On the other hand, the site is easy to navigate, and the navigation bars at the left and along the top cover nearly everything in the WRHS system. The top bar provides a link to all of the museums, libraries, and historic sites encompassed by the Western Reserve Historical Society, while the left bar leads to such things as the collections catalog, background information about the Western Reserve and the society, and educational materials for teachers and students. With little searching effort, one can find the institutional mission statement for the WRHS. It is clearly articulated and covers nearly all aspects of the institution; the website certainly seems to go a long way in fulfilling the statement as well. The website would certainly receive high marks in the first section of the NCPH rating system.
Apart from the color scheme issues, the technical aspects of the website appear to be quite sound. There are no broken links, and all of the multimedia works quickly. Each of the exhibits in the WRHS history museum have their own preview website, and several feature flash media. On a computer updated with the latest version of the Flash Player, the media all works flawlessly, but visitors are given the option of viewing versions without it. This is important when faced with the possibility that users may not have the same levels of technological skills or equipment. The left link bar also features contact information for the institutions offices and a list of individual staff members. This is an important feature for donors of visitors that might not have a lot of time to wait to get their questions answered. As one would expect, there is also plenty of assistance for those wishing to know when they can visit the institution and how to get there. Surprisingly, the left bar's link to the museum's online shop features only two items for sale; one is a museum donation, and the other is a necklace, the picture of which is broken. The “Gift Shop” link on the top bar offers a little more, but still cannot qualify as a true online shop. In fact, it does not appear that any of the items featured on the site can actually be bought online, but rather must be requested over the phone or by email. Certainly a history website's online shop cannot be considered one of its most important aspects, but it is important for a site to have high professional standards for anything that it puts on the web. Perhaps the WRHS would be better off taking down the shop portion of their site until it is more complete.
The WRHS website offers plenty of research opportunities for academic historians. It's library claims to be "the principal repository for histories, records, and papers relating to the growth and development of Cleveland and that portion of northeastern Ohio once known as the Connecticut Western Reserve.” Through what must have been an incredible effort, all of the library's collections are searchable online. A search for Carl Stokes, Cleveland mayor and first African-American mayor of a major city, returns a wide array of books, pamphlets, and reports. In fact, the WRHS library has the entire collection of Stokes' manuscripts including personal correspondence, meeting minutes, and newspaper clippings. Perhaps in the future the WRHS library will be able to make more of its material available online in the form of digitized documents and photographs, but the ability to search such a vast collection of primary source material is a good start.
Educators visiting the WRHS website will find a wide range of teaching materials available for nearly all grade levels. Perhaps the best of the online education programs “An Urban Childhood” which introduces students to life in Cleveland in 1850. The site uses animation and sound, combined with images of primary source documents and museum objects to teach students about historical issues as complex as “the 4 factors of production”. The educational materials do not dumb down history, and they encourage questions and debate. Furthermore, the materials encourage educators to bring their students to the museum to view the objects and documents for themselves. The “Urban Childhood” program features two sites, one for before the field trip and one for after. This is not only beneficial to the students, but it is another way to bring visitors and revenue to the museum.
While the site certainly has its flaws, notably the lack of community building features, it does manage to support the mission of the Western Reserve Historical society by providing a greater degree of access to the collections and assisting in the education of the public. While the site's color scheme leaves something to be desired, it is well organized and easy to navigate. Essentially, any criticisms of the site are diminished because of their marginal importance, while strengths are magnified because they happen to be in the areas most important in a public history website.
1. DeRuyver et. al. Rating System for Evaluating Public History Websites. April 30, 2000. http://www.publichistory.org/reviews/rating_system.html, Feb 10, 2008
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