This week, we were asked to look at two different digital history sites of our choice and review them based on the Journal of American History’s Digital History Review standards.

For the first site, I chose to review Photogrammar, which maps nearly 170,000 photographs taken across the United States during the Great Depression era (1935-1944). This website is maintained by the University of Richmond.

• Photogrammar’s content focuses less on outright critical interpretation of the materials and instead focuses on creating an easy way to navigate primary sources via different search criteria. The site does include contextual information as to the period and the reason as to why to these photographs in general exist on the “Introduction” page. It also links photographer biographies and interviews on the “Photographers” page, allowing users to learn more about individual intentions and focuses.

• As previously noted, the collection is broken down into pages for “Photographers,” as well as “Themes” (visual subjects) and “Maps”, as arranged by counties or cities. These page divisions make it incredibly simple to navigate this massive collection. Additionally, there is a literal search function which provides a singular form for the entire collection, which is ideal if a user has a specific image or subject in mind without having to sort through a separate page. One downside of the site’s design would be the text and blocking on the “Themes” page: it is generally pretty small, and the spacing of blocks can be overwhelming, just by the sheer number of subcategories fit into a single non-scrolling page. This could potentially be improved by making the sidebar showing image results collapsible, at least when first viewing the page, or by increasing the block/font sizes and making the page scrollable. The “About” page does note that the design and content was improved in its 2023 update.

• This website is part of American Panorama from the University of Richmond, and so is designed for researchers, students, and enthusiasts, especially those with a focus on Great Depression and World War II civil conditions in the United States. Obviously as the American Panorama are all digital projects, one would expect its users to have a degree of tech-savvy, however, the design of Photogrammar isn’t particularly advanced or technical, so people unexperienced with other digital history programs are able to search it.

• Overall, the foundation of Photogrammar appears to be a fairly basic collections database, similar to Omeka, though it does a really good job of integrating GIS maps at different scales, as well as a timeline feature that separates individual photographers for easy searching. It also divides themes/subjects from each of these photographers on said timeline.

• Photogrammar features an “About” page that includes citations for the most recent version (3.0, 2023). Beyond just names, it also includes descriptions of each individual’s role in the project, as well as if they are associated with a different organization than the University of Richmond.
  • Fun fact: these train images taken by Jack Delano in Baring (Knox Co.), Missouri in 1943 were about 30 minutes east of my hometown. The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railway route that this train took would have cut through La Plata, about 15 minutes south of Kirksville. The La Plata station is still used by Amtrak today and its trains run from Chicago to Los Angeles. The town is also home to the Depot Inn, part-hotel, part-railway museum.

For the second site, I chose to review the Internet Archive, which includes over 1 trillion archived web pages and several tens of millions of other digital resources. It is an independent non-profit organization.

• The Internet Archive does not provide any independent scholarship of its resources, though many resources do provide individual descriptions of their uses and purposes.
• I would argue that this site uses an older web design (it has thankfully been updated since its original creation in 1996), but one that it is very functional for such a massive, all-encompassing collection. In my opinion and experience, the most useful feature is just using the search bar rather than the media type pages in the navigation bar. From the search bar, it is easier to input a narrower set of criteria for publication date, media type, collection, etc., rather than scrolling through the myriads of page thumbnails. I would say that a design flaw comes with the nature of the archive being public use. Users really on the metadata input of anonymous people and the assumption that their information is accurate. Mislabeled and unknown metadata definitely makes searches more difficult.
• The Internet Archive has features that make it useful for all sorts of users, including researchers, institutions, and general public. It contains so many different sorts of resources that anyone should be able to find something useful in it, no matter the subject or content. It certainly advertises to institutions with Archive-It, a feature that I know UMW’s Special Collections and University Archives uses in archiving defunct/previous versions of websites.
• The Wayback Machine makes the Internet Archive especially unique, as it allows users to archive and view not just individual resources (books, images, videos, etc.), but entire websites, even if they are defunct. They are the largest and most inclusive resource in locating and viewing these sites, so is incredibly valuable, especially in the digital age where reliable media seems so impermanent.
• The Internet Archive is associated with numerous major organizations, but the actual uploading of most resources comes from individual anonymous users. There is not a number given on how many accounts exist and have contributed to the archive. The only firm list of individuals is the Board of Directors (Bios), who have backgrounds in archival work, digital publication, and communication. Their personal collections and ideas certainly have made impacts on the Internet Archive; however their actual physical involvement would be relatively small to its sheer size.