Take some time to explore one of the websites from the list below.
http://ww2history.com/blog/
Links to an external site.
https://www.leg.bc.ca/dyl/Pages/1939-to-1945-World-War-II-and-the-Japanese-Internment.aspx
Links to an external site.
http://www.westpoint.edu/history/SitePages/WWII%20Asian%20Pacific%20Theater.aspx
Links to an external site.
http://www.junobeach.info/index.htm
Links to an external site.
http://www.auschwitz.dk/
Links to an external site.
http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/adolf-hitler
Links to an external site.
Find a second website on your own that investigates a topic related to World War II – preferably the website will have some connection to your final paper topic, but it doesn’t have to. Please do not use online databases for this assignment . You may use websites for museums, archives, and libraries. Online encyclopedias, including Wikipedia, are permitted but not the best source, and specific pages should be selected – do not attempt to review Wikipedia as a whole.
After familiarizing yourself with the content of each website, write a report highlighting each one’s strengths and weaknesses and summarize your findings about which website you feel is most useful and most reliable for gathering information as a researcher about the war. Be as specific as possible when you explain your reasoning. Ensure that the following pieces of information are included in your report:
Each website’s author(s) and, when possible, date of inception and when it was last updated;
Background on author(s), including any professional or institutional affiliations;
Rough overview of each website’s content, including organization/structure, themes, references, visuals, primary documents ;
Any other important information specific to each site;
Ease of use ;
Any detectable perspective or bias* expressed by each site’s author(s).
If you cannot find any author information, comment on why this could be problematic for a reader and whether/how you might use this kind of website for research for a formal History paper.
When evaluating the reliability of an author or a page/site, ask yourself some of these questions: how important is the author’s level of education? Should there be an institutional affiliation? What if there are no clearly identified sources? Does it matter where a website’s funding comes from? If there are ads on the page/site, what are the ads for and what does this suggest about who runs the page/site ? If there are photos, are the photos captioned and cited? If they aren’t, is this problematic?
The report should be take the form of a critical or analytical review, should conform to standard formatting and include a title , page numbers, double spacing, standard font and font size. Length is 1,000 – 1,500 words. Screen shots may be included if it helps the report, but these are not required. The report should include proper citations, with a strong preference for Chicago-style citations.
* You may want to consider these two terms carefully in your report, as they are not synonyms. Each source you look at will have a particular perspective; some but not all will exhibit obvious bias.
