Digital Archive Blog

The September 11 Digital Archive is a site created with intention of collecting and preserving digital copies of media records relating to the history of 9/11. The media they have stored vary largely from emails and communication records during the attack to digital images/animation and interviews of people. This site is able to offer to their viewer three features: browse, research and contribute. The browsing and researching component of the website allows viewer to learn and check out all the information that 9/11 Digital Archive has to offer regarding the incident. Contribution is the biggest part of this website since large part of the archive is created from submission by visitors. Anyone can essentially add and upload media to the site after filling in some of the question boxes which comes with the uploading process.  I believe this site is valuable for its database which was created by the website creator as well as contributors. During the visitor’s process of uploading the media, two interesting questions are asked by the site: “How has your life changed because of what happened on September 11, 2001?” and “How will you remember the September 11 attacks on the anniversary?”  These questions are there to give the incoming media source to the database a personal insight and touch of humanity. It gives otherwise normal picture or bad drawing done by 5-6 years old an emotional impact which can only be attained with answer to the two question. The idea of creating an open source like database was also an excellent idea as it captures the events of what individual people went through during the time of event. It also shows what people around the world that weren’t directly affected by it via their communication history. The website is well made website which represents the event of 9/11 very well.

Hurricane Digital Memory Bank website is a website created for collecting stories of hurricane Katrina and Rita. The website contains over 25,000 items in the collection which shows the devastating destruction that Katrina and Rita left behind. Similar to the September 11 site, this website offer massive collection of media and function for visitors to contribute their story via digital collection to the site. Each collection contained in the database had a description which appealed to the reader’s grief. Although the September 11 and Hurricane Digital both do exactly same thing, I believe September 11 has pull it off better. This came mostly from the difference in interface and design of the website. Navigation was much better in September 11 and. Hurricane Digital was built very simple but it still carries out their intended purpose. In that respect, I believe Hurricane Digital website to be still valuable and good representation of event of hurricane Katrina and Rita.

The last of the three website is Occupy Archive, which has the purpose of collecting stories relating to Occupy Movement of 2011. The features on the website are same as the previous two but the database is considerably smaller with whole collection adding up to 3000. Of the 3000, almost all of them were pictures. Although pictures do show ongoing events at the time, the other categories which come with the picture, such as title and subject among many other categories makes the viewing of picture more confusing than it had to be. Furthermore, there might be problem with the website as I saw duplicates of picture. All this only showed me that admin aren’t checking the quality of submission they are getting properly and not bothering to fix simple stuff which could improve user experience. The quality of website was very poor and the pictures it provided, only real source of database, were subpar. The website is not really valuable since it does not provide much meaningful resources and is poor representation of the event since I haven’t really understood much from it.

Digital archives and their Impacts on Society

Digital archives have become a gateway for us to delve into the past. Just by clicking a single browse button on http://911digitalarchive.org/ we are able to “explore the collection for stories, images, emails, documents, sounds, and videos of September 11”. The very fact that we are able to research with the click of a button over a screen in our living room is astonishing. A decade ago, even investigators who need solid evidence of the horrific accident would have to physically go to the crash site, go to the library and pull up archives of what happened that day and of course video may not have been available online like it is today.

 

The digital archives are not just a means of easy accessibility; they are a method of preservation. Physical evidence often fades, and now matter how advanced our science has become over the years, one cannot truly say that physical evidence will perfectly stay in tact forever. In this digital age we live in, documents being available online is something that is of great convenience, not only to scholars and students, but to all those who wish to learn about world events or natural disasters. Lets take for example the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank. The site uses electronic media to record and film natural disasters such as hurricane Katrina and Rita. The beautiful thing about this site is how this electronic information is attained. Just as we are learning in class right now, “the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank contributes to the ongoing effort by historians and archivists to preserve the record of these storms by collecting first-hand accounts, on-scene images, blog postings, and podcasts”. These methods are prime examples of information that we’ve been studying and will be studying in class, being used first hand in the world of digital history.

 

Another intriguing fact of digital archives it’s recordings of the present to show future generations of historical events that are happening right now in our world. The occupy archive website gives us a first hand look into the “occupy wall street” movement. The site posts photos and short videos of eyewitness events. In many ways, this site can be said to be a site of the people, the very people who are occupying wall street and suffering due to the American economic crisis. No longer are historical archives made for intellectuals, but made for our every day regular citizens who wish to broaden their knowledge on what is happening around the world. This may lead some to say that it leaves room for digital history to be toyed with, as we read in the “How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit,” article. As discussed in our tutorial today, this is a debate can be beaten over and over again but the results of history becoming available online will not be know for the next decade of so due to the fact that it is in it’s early stages right now. One thing is for certain and it’s that the digital revolution is certainly under way. 

Digital History Archives

When it comes to the study of history, one of the most valuable and important tools historians use are primary sources. Secondary journal articles, essays and research papers analyzing the event after the fact are all well and good and are very useful in their own right. However, nothing is quite the same as sources directly from the event itself. Pictures of the event and of the people experiencing it, first hand accounts from people who were actually there during the event, physical items from the event, these sources tell the story of history like nothing else. The problem with primary sources, though, is that the farther you go back in history, the harder they are to come by. People die, pictures fade, documents get destroyed in a fire or somehow else get lost in time. Storing primary resources over long periods of time is an expensive and often impossible task, especially in the case of first hand accounts. The Web solves many of those issues by providing a cheap, easy to maintain and long-lasting archive primary sources of important historical events can be gathered, archived and preserved for generations to come. Let’s look at three particular digital archives to see what value they provide.

The first is the 9/11 Digital Archive. This archive is a site that gathers, organizes and preserves more than 150 000 digital items about the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. The items include emails and other communications, images, interviews, government documents and first hand accounts of people who experienced the attacks. It also provides a FAQ section containing links to a timeline of the events of the day, as well as other newspaper articles where you can find more information on the victims, the responders and more.

The second archive is the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank is the largest free and public digital archive for preserving items about Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The archive contains over 25 000 items, including images, first hand accounts, blog postings, podcasts and other primary sources on the hurricanes.

The third archive is The Occupy Archive. This archive gathers photos, documents, personal accounts and other primary resources about the various Occupy movements that occurred during 2011.

Out of the three archives, the most comprehensive, most well organized and most representative of them all is easily the 9/11 Digital Archive, both having had the most time to collect and organize its material and dealing the most significant historical event of the three archives. However, the importance of all three archives cannot be understated. All of the archives contain an unprecedented amount of primary sources on their respective subjects at many orders of magnitude greater than any other resource available. They are also open, public and free, meaning anyone can access them and submit material to them. This model means that the stories of many people who would normally be passed over by traditional media can be told and can be preserved for generations to come. News programs and government documents and reactions are also preserved, providing both sides of the experience. 100+ years from now, when historians are studying our time, they will be able to go to these digital archives and access countless numbers of primary sources, projecting them into the past and allowing them to  almost experience the events first hand through the personal and professional accounts given on these websites at a level unlike anything before it.

Just like how audio and video recording revolutionized historians’ abilities to look into the past, the Web and, specifically, these digital archives will further revolutionize that ability by providing an unprecedented scope of primary resources that can be preserved in pristine condition for generations to come.

Views of Terrorism, Hurricanes, and Protests

Digital archives, especially those that utilize an open model of submission, are in my opinion rather difficult to address in terms of historical importance. On the one hand, their value to the contemporary or future historians should not be dismissed, as the advantages they offer in terms of volume, detail, range, and personal value simply cannot be exaggerated. On the other hand, however, their very value risks burying recognition of the drawbacks and pitfalls inherent in the medium. Although the positives certainly outweigh the negatives, it is necessary to examine both sides of the coin in order to properly assess open digital archives as a historical tool.

One of the most dramatic changes of our time and place is the sheer volume of primary sources available to the modern historian. Not only are more and more documents preserved, but the high rate of literacy in the Western world allows a greater percentage of an already larger population to leave records of their experiences. As databases of pictures, personal accounts, and even videos of their respective focuses, the 9/11 Digital Archive, Hurricane Digital Memory Bank, and Occupy Archive are such vast repositories of information that to say that they dwarf the archives of the past would risk understatement. In addition to advantages of size, these archives give historians access to aspects of the events sometimes difficult to find in academic histories. These are records of the reactions of the people; not one person or institution, but many, highly varied both in terms of detail and in terms of contributors. Someone only loosely connected to the event in question might record their reactions on hearing of it on one page, while in another entry an eyewitness goes into detail about being part of the event. These many windows into the events in question give the historian both a myriad of angles through which to examine it and many accounts to utilize in the examination.

Although it is easy to overlook when discussing historical value, the value on an individual level of open archives like these should also be acknowledged. For those who lived through the events, the creation of a database of personal reactions can help in two key ways: helping to broaden the views of those not intimately connected to the events and to provide a launching point for the discussion of the events. Both of these are hugely beneficial from an educational standpoint, although they may not directly impact the disciple of history itself.

However, digital archives have several common negative aspects which should also be recognized. One of these is a lack of provenance, or common source material, which, although seemingly negligible, does have an impact of the shape of the archive. When an archive is organized around medium or theme, as in the case of the Hurricane Memory Bank and the Occupy Archive, the source material jumbles together to one degree or another, whereas provenance-focused databases like the 9/11 Archive offer a clearer view of where the material originated from. Because they are web based, digital archives also face challenges of clean design and accessibility. While all three are sponsored by George Mason University, the 9/11 archive has clearly been developed to a much greater degree, probably due to both the relative significance of the events covered and the support of the Library of Congress. In contrast, finding information in the Occupy Archive is highly difficult due to its rough nature. Finally, because of the open nature of each archive, they face the common problem of internet sources, namely reliability. While false information is of course possible to produce in all mediums, the nature of the internet makes it difficult to be sure how well stories are vetted before being posted.

These, however, are not the most worrisome aspects of the 3 digital archives. Rather, I am most concerned about the groupthink-style effect that is produced in these archives. Each of these archives has their own distinct tone which is manifest throughout the archive. When reading the recent “Houston” entry of the Hurricane Memory Bank, it is immediately clear that the entry, expressing a positive view of the experience, does not fit with the narrative of disruption and damage that permeate the other stories there, when in reality all such events impact people differently. Not all people have positive memories of the Occupy movement, and the impact on the personal level is not the totality of 9/11’s influence. Although all sources inevitably have some degree of bias, it is troubling to view not one, but three entire databases which are slanted towards one perspective.

Publicly compiled digital archives, therefore, have many positives to be utilized but also several negatives that must be acknowledged. When a user is careful not to let the skewed viewpoint cloud their understanding of the event in question, open digital archives are very useful tools, providing a view into the past for historians and alternative views on experiences for contributors.

Actively Writing History

In history there is so much that has been lost because we simply cannot find any evidence to explain what happened. Examples like the Mayans, the lost civilization of Crete and other come to mind. I have no evidence to support this claim and so it is merely an opinion but I believe that because we now study our history so intensely and are living so much longer that we are more interesting in preserving our history and legacy than we ever have.

This is where the Superbowl is held in a week. It’s amazing how things change.

The Occupy, 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina archives are publicly created internet based collections (try saving that 3 times fast) of images, videos, documents and other items. To use the Occupy site as an example, the purpose is, “documenting and saving the digital evidence and stories from the Occupy protests worldwide.” The Hurricane and 9/11 sites have similar ‘about’ pages that state that they are creating a collection of images, videos, documents as well as blog posts and other personal stories. In other words these sites are helping to actively create a social history collection for these events.

I find these sites fascinating as they give very personal perspectives to these subjects as opposed to the mass media news stories that covered them. It puts us into the shoes of single individuals who suffered through the tragedies or took part in the protests. It keeps the memory of these movements fresh too. Meaning that as time goes on, the Hurricane, the towers falling or the mass protests that were ongoing aren’t simply remember from the peripherals. What I mean to say is, instead of remembering them simply from afar, we can remember them through the eyes of the peoples who witnessed and were affected by them first hand.

Having history told in this way is extremely valuable in my opinion. We are able feel more in touch with the Second World War by reading personal letters to and from soldiers who were fighting on the front lines. Using the same idea, being able to read the personal account of someone who protested in the Occupy Olympia movement, see a picture of sign on the door of a UNDP office close after 9/11, or download the Oral History of Emma West who rode out Hurricane Katrina in Gulfport, gives us deeper insight and a more personalized look at history.

I was incredibly impressed by how extensive the Hurricane Katrina Archive seemed to cover the event. From pictures to video to Oral Histories and other things, it just seemed to be extremely deep in its coverage of the event. I think that can partially be attributed to it them going out and interviewing people who were in the storm because it made sure that even those who had lost everything were able to have a voice in what happened. The same seems to be true of the 9/11 archive but I find that the age of the website is makes it slightly difficult to navigate.

The Occupy Archive is pretty limited in the number of items you can find on it. Most of the items are pictures, there are very few stories and there are a limited number of interviews. I have a hard time exactly pinpointing why this is but I have a feeling that historians find that while it is an interesting event in a sociological context, it’s not as important as a natural disaster or a massive terrorist attack.

This is more of a side note but I found it cool (and it likely wasn’t a coincidence) that all of these websites were funded/supported by the George Mason University’s Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (I assume that if I don’t put the full name that they’re going to send out a hit team to teach me a lesson).

Overall, I think it’s great that people think it important to actively keep record our social history. In 100 years, the new generations will be able to understand our generation and era more fully because of these sites. This is a slightly personal note but I find myself thinking about what legacy I may have and how my future bloodlines will think about it, so this topic hits home in a way and I hope that we (as historians) can appreciate the importance of these sorts of projects.

Digital Archive Review

Out of the three sites, I found the 9/11 Digital Archive to be the most representative and organized. As a result, I’ve decided to focus primarily on identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the 9/11 Archive. I then decided to compare some of these pros and cons with elements from the Hurricane Katrina and Occupy Archives.

Here we go…

What are they all about?

The September 11 Digital Archive is a collection of over 150,000 digitized items intended to preserve and present the history of 9/11.

The Hurricane Digital Memory Bank is dedicated to collecting and preserving items concerning hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The Occupy Archive collects primary source documents on the various Occupy Movements that occurred during 2011.

What do they offer?

The 9/11 Digital Archive is an extensive collection of emails, personal stories and photos that were produced on, or relate to, the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

In addition to personal stories, federal and municipal government documents have been included. These documents consist of reports from the National Guard, the New York City Fire Department, and emails from the Department of Justice.

An FAQ section has also been included on the site. It contains links to a timeline, relevant newspapers articles, and supplementary information on victims, first responders, and the reconstruction of New York City and Ground Zero.

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The Hurricane Digital Memory Bank contains 25,000 items ranging from first-hand accounts, on-scene images, blog postings, and podcasts about hurricane Katrina and Rita.

The most compelling collection on the site is a compilation of artwork from children recollecting their experience of Katrina and Rita.

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The Occupy Archive has collected photos, documents, oral histories and videos about the 2011 occupy movements that erupted all over the world.

Are they valuable and representative?

Stories and memories of those who were immediately affected by 9/11 have been meticulously chronicled and collected. However, the voices of others, including the responses from around the world, have not always been preserved to the same extent. By allowing users to browse through emails and flyers from the streets of New York, the 9/11 Archive provides valuable insight into how the attacks impacted everyday Americans.

Another useful part of the archive was that all of the items were categorized into distinct collections. This made browsing through the database much easier.

Furthermore, the inclusion of government documents provided an administrative and operational perspective on the event, rather than a personal perspective. The collection of the New York City Fire Department Incident Action Plans illustrates how the city of New York responded to, and documented the crisis. These plans are incredibly informative and make the site more comprehensive.

Lastly, from a personal perspective, I found some of the collections absolutely remarkable. The email collection from everyday Americans was fascinating to read, and the Michael Ragsdale Flyer Collection is an exhibit of remarkable proportions in regards to archiving the societal response to the attacks over a one-year period.

With that said, the site is not without its shortcomings.

Although the site is not meant to assist the victims of 9/11, or those mentally traumatized by the events, I nonetheless wish the archive had included links to organizations dedicated to providing these services.

Another noticeable feature that detracts from the site’s value is the archaic layout. The site is predominantly presented in a textual format, rather than through organized and sleek menus that include images or videos. Because of this, although the information is compelling, the way users access it is not.

Furthermore, although the site reveals the response of everyday Americans to the attacks, the responses from around the world to 9/11 are marginalized.

In comparison to The 9/11 Digital Archive, I found The Hurricane Digital Memory Bank and the Occupy Archive significantly less valuable.

Firstly, the Hurricane and Occupy Archives were devoid of an administrative perspective. Unlike the 9/11 Archive, both did not have a collection of sensitive government documents detailing the national or provincial/state plan of action.

In addition, the voice of unaffected, yet still connected Americans, was missing in both the Hurricane and Occupy Archives. Furthermore, like the 9/11 Archive, the international “bystander” response was also absent.

Similarly, the Occupy Archive, although it claimed to collect items from all Occupy Movements from around the world, did not do so in a broad capacity. Although they had Flickr images from countless protests, there were few relevant textual items supplementing the photos. This was most apparent in their collection of Occupy Toronto.

Lastly, I found both the Hurricane and Occupy Archives to be extremely disorganized. Indeed, both relied predominantly on photographs, which were usually devoid of a description, or, in some cases, the descriptions provided were too text heavy. As a result, collections were not succinctly set into context, which made disseminating the information difficult.

The Final Word…

At the end of the day, all three sites provide users with an unprecedented amount of data on three historic events. However, the 9/11 Archive was noticeably more polished, organized and representative. My advice to both the Hurricane and Occupy Archives would be to take a page from the 9/11 Archive: organize collections and add features that will bolster your site’s comprehensiveness like a timeline of events, an FAQ, or Links section.

Historical Archives Review

9/11 Digital Archive preserves and presents the history, first hand accounts etc of the 9/11 attack using digital media. Offers stories, emails, animation, art, photographs, interviews, documents and audio/video files. Allows contributions from any one, and makes it easy to contribute.The website not only stores and presents the history and the aftermath of 9/11, but also focuses on showing the social effects of the attack. For example if a person was to make a contribution to the archive, he will be prompted to say why 9/11 had an impact on his life and how he will remember the events of that day. So the website goes beyond regurgitating the interviews, pictures and video, but also shows the effect of the disaster on a personal level. It helps historians to see beyond raw statistics and regard the victims, survivors, witnesses and responders on a personal level rather than just a number.The archive presents the media in a relatable way which is important if we are to understand the emotional effects of the attack. 9/11 affected most people in the world, since probably every one who was old enough to remember, can still recount where he or she was at the time of the attack. In a way, the most lasting effect is on our emotions, which makes it important to represent the history in such a way, in which the future generations will still be able to relate to the victims and survivors. The art and interview sections do the best job of of doing this because they represent the most personal reflection of people’s feelings at the time. For this reason I believe the website represents the events of 9/11 extremely well.

 

Similar to the 9/11 Digital Archive, Hurricane Digital Media Bank uses digital media to collect, preserve and present the events, as well as the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The website collects first hand testimonies, blogs, photos, podcasts and videos. Submissions could be made by anyone and it is easy to do so.Hurricane archive attempts to fulfil the same objective as the 9/11 Archive – preserving the history of hurricanes Katrina and Rita for the following generations. The two websites are not only similar in objective, but also design. Hurricane archive is built on the model of the 9/11 DA which speaks about the effectiveness of preserving history in digital forms. The fact that this form of preservation is becoming more popular, also shows that these archives are successful in presenting the history in a way that is valuable for future generations. Ensuring not only lasting memory of the event, but also connecting future generations to the victims on an individual and personal level. It is easy to relate to the victims through first hand accounts and sympathize with them. Moreover, the archive gives a good overview of the disaster, as well as the aftermath by utilizing many relevant photographs and videos.

 

Occupy Archive is a website run by the same organization responsible for Hurricane Memory Bank. The website’s purpose is to collect and save evidence and stories related to the Occupy movement originated in New York. Every one is welcome to contribute, and those who do, will retain all the copyright, same as 9/11 archive and Hurricane Memory Bank.The website is a little tougher to navigate than the previous two, mainly because the information is not laid out too well. The images section in particular has some short comings such as small picture size and unnecessary posts which seem to be stories rather than pictures. Another shortcoming of this archive is the absence of items in the videos tab. The information available is nowhere as diverse as 9/11 or the Hurricane archives. Most of the items on the website seem to be pictures. While they have historical value, just pictures is not always enough to represent an event well, or convey the experiences of the protesters in a relatable way.

Archive Review

The September 11 Digital Archive is a site which collects documents pertaining to the September 11^th attacks on the World Trade Center.  Some of the documents include photos, stories from witnesses, as well as videos, audio recordings, and newspaper articles on the attacks. It’s very well organized and easy to navigate without much difficulty at all. A large portion of the information on the page seems to be contributions from site visitors. It does a very good job at selecting documents which both show the traumatic effect of the people whose lives were impacted by the attacks, but does it in a way that doesn’t come off as sensationalist or messing with people’s emotions in order to rile up American patriotism or enthusiasm for the military campaigns which began as a result of the attacks. Again, it’s easy to navigate, lots of interesting and engaging information, and put together in a rather tasteful way.

The Hurricane Digital Memory Bank was put together to preserve a digital record of the destruction to the city of New Orleans, and the surrounding area, caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.  There are a lot of pictures of the aftermath, much more than I recall seeing in the news at the time, which really helps to understand the scale of the damage caused by the storms. I found this one a little trickier to navigate, mostly due to the limited number of items per page. While they did a really good job at separating out the different media (images, stories, videos, maps, etc.), constantly having to reload the page over and over again got old quickly. This got even more annoying when I wanted to go back and find a picture, but couldn’t remember which page it was on. The same goes for their Collections. Well put-together, but difficult to find specific ones if you can’t remember their page number.

The Occupy Archive, meant to document and archive the Occupy movement which began in 2011, both succeeded and failed at doing this. As far as an archive, it’s difficult to navigate, and generally not all that well put together. In order to see the pictures in the Images tab, you have to click on each link, and then scroll about halfway down the page in order to see them, and when so many of the pictures have similar titles (there is about a page and a half’s worth of pictures all with the title “OCCUPY SANDY”, and all bearing the same description and tags). If it weren’t for the browser feature which darkens the colour of a link once you click on it, I wouldn’t have been able to tell if I’d seen the picture before. However, in providing up-to-date documents as the events were happening, I feel like it would have done a good job. It seems as if they wanted to build an archive, but ran it as a blog. There are no Collections, at least not as far as I can tell, which leads me to think that the site was used more for posting documents “as it happens”, rather than organizing an efficient archive of the movement.  

Week Three: Citizen Histories

By now, you should all have received an e-mail from me with some specific feedback on your first introductory blog post and touching base about your class final projects. I can’t believe that our class is now a quarter over!

Readings for next week are on the website. To access the “New Old Things” article in the Canadian Journal of Communication, you can use the provided link if you are on-campus. If you are at home, log in through the library webpage as you would for any other journal and find it via that page. I’ll remind you on Tuesday so you can make sure to grab it in class.

Also for next week (I will send a note out – I just remembered how bad our internet connections can be in class), could you please download the following software:

Audacity

I will bring it on a USB key as well.

Some other links of use:

Creative Commons

Copyright FAQ and Guide to Fair Dealing, from the UW Library

The Last American Pirate blog

Historical Archives

The September 11 Digital Archive is devoted to the tragedy of the terrorist attacks that took place on 9/11. The site contains a collection of accounts from witnesses of the tragedy and stories from people who visited the locations of the attacks. The website also contains Images such as photos that people took before and after the attacks occurred. There is also artwork that people, including children, created to remember the victims who died and the heroes (firefighters, Police, first response teams, etc.) that helped save people and very bravely attempted to find and save more that were trapped. There is also audio and video clips (voice mails) from site visitors and written interviews from people who were affected by this event. Upon reading these accounts I could immediately see the emotional state of some of the people being interviewed and get a feeling of how hard it must have been. I think this site is valuable because it remembers all the victims impacted by 911 and also pays respect to all the men and women of the first response teams that helped to save lives. It also helps if you want to research this event by letting you go through collections of pictures, interviews, etc. Overall, I found this site to be easy to navigate, engaging and full of a lot of useful information. I would recommend people visit this site to get a better image of the devastation that occurred on that day.

The Hurricane Digital Memory Bank was created to collect stories, images, videos and other items to keep a record of the Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The images that I looked at really gave me a good glimpse at just how much damage happened and how devastating these storms were. You can see people’s homes that were just destroyed and neighbourhoods flooded. These images go beyond the descriptive words and help make the event more real or concrete to the general population. Entering the home page of the site it tells the visitors what the site was created for. It is very interactive and easy to navigate. It has a search engine on the home page that allows visitors to look for specific information easily. It has maps that allows people to see the locations that were effected and where some of the pictures on the site were taken. The site has first hand accounts of what happened and how people were effected which makes it a good primary source for researchers. I found this site to be relevant in description and images and it was engaging and informative. The information contained within gave an excellent and well-rounded glimpse into the tragedies that occurred.

The Occupy Archive is much more difficult to navigate. I found that when I first entered the site homepage, unlike the other two sites, had very little on it. The navigation bar seemed to have minimal tabs to redirect me to events that had taken place. The navigational bar seemed to have too much information encompassed in a single tab causing to be more difficult to find specific events, images, description, etc. It lacked a description of the group or movements purpose and objective, both through text or image. The more I navigated the site through clicking on links the more I found myself redirected to new pages and more confused about the information the site was trying to provide. Additionally, the site seemed to contain no information on some of the links I selected (took me to a blank page) which felt like I was hitting a dead-end. This site felt to me that it was still in a construction phase because of the lack of guidance that is available when I was navigating through. I did not find this site as valuable as the other 2 because of the issues mentioned above. It almost seemed to encompass to wide of a topic without information about each particular event. The site, however, does seem to have potential if information was added and the navigational problems were addressed.