What we do learn about the author:?  He is fascinated by the Great Depression but admits he wants to learn more about it, i.e., does not know so much yet.  You can get more reliable information from print sources.

On the "Overview" and "Books" pages, it gradually becomes clear that the site has an agenda.  Agendas are legitimate, but you must be aware of them.  What is the agenda here?  (Look not only at the text, but also the books and their publishers.)

What you might do with this site:  Follow the links to more reliable sources.

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What is included on the timeline?  What is left off?  Some of the more controversial features of DuPont's history find no mention.  Moreover, timelines make history seem simpler than it is.  Entire books have been written about some of the entries on this one.

What you might do with this site:  Use it cautiously for basic orientation, but follow up with real research in the databases and the library.

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There is something of a gee-whiz, admiratory tone:  "greatest science achievements," "a remarkable century of discovery."  That's fine;  science education is an admirable venture.  And the individual biographies don't necessarily hide critical information (look, for instance, at William Shockley's).  But the purpose is still basic education, not critical inquiry, with a bit of entertainment attached.

Where does the information come from?  We don't know, so we can't check it.

The site's organization (great individuals and their discoveries) presents a particular way of looking at the history of science.  It highlights spectacular phenomena.  It is not so good for capturing long-term developments.

What you might do with this site:  Use it cautiously for basic orientation, but follow up with real research.  For something this general, you would start from the links listed under "Identifying Secondary Sources."

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We know a great deal about who put up the site.  Cold Spring Harbor is a major biological laboratory, we are given the names of the authors and the staff, we are told who the advisors are and who funded the project.  The "Authors" page has a long bibliography.  The site is clearly attentive to full disclosure.

The reason, of course, is that the subject is very sensitive.  All through the text you can see the concerns.

Why was this site created?  It was funded by the Human Genome Project.  Part of the concern is to persuade visitors that eugenics and the Human Genome Project are two distinct enterprises.  There is an agenda — is there ever no agenda? — and you should build that into your assessment.

For my own taste, the site is a little bit too soothing.  I am not so reassured by the distinction between "political and social prejudices" and "scientific facts," and I ask myself about the Human Genome Project funding.  But I also know how sites like this get built, I respect the historians on the panel, and I agree that putting the primary materials online lets visitors make their own assessments.

What you might do with this site:  Use the primary material (in fact, I do in lecture).  Take the essays seriously and use them critically, as with any other reputable secondary source.  Follow up with the bibliography.

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There is always the question:  What got left out?  That question is itself of historical import:  How has psychology been defined over the years?  But since the selection is catholic, the authors seem to have no major axe to grind.

What do we lose by seeing the texts online?  We don't get a feel for their places of publication.  For instance, we can't thumb through the journals, seeing what other articles they published, who served on the editorial boards, how they presented themselves. 

What you might do with this site:  Use the topical table of contents for an entree.  Read texts online, particularly if they're hard to get at otherwise.  But probably also look them up in the library, to see what is lost in reformatting.  And follow up with secondary sources from the databases and the library.

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Who put up the page, and why?  It is meant to honor Kwolek, since it is connected with her receiving an award from the Chemical Heritage Foundation.  But the biographical data are unlikely to be too inaccurate.  What is the Chemical Heritage Foundation?  It is a research institution that wants to use history to "make known the achievements of chemical and molecular scientists and engineers and of related sciences, technologies, and industries."  There is a certain amount of public relations involved, but less overtly so than, say, with the DuPont site.

What you might do with this site:  Use its biographical information.  Supplement with more general histories.  Write to the Chemical Heritage Foundation about access to the oral history interview mentioned at the end.

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Given this function, how much independence did the writer/historians have?  They are recognized figures, as you can determine by searching the library catalog.  There is not much sign that their work was affected by the Lab's sponsorship.  The text is not heroic or triumphalist, except for a few words of the site's introduction, and it describes the bad along with the good.

The text appears to include unattributed quotations, always a warning signal.  But the table of contents links to the sources of the quotations, from which you can get a sense of the research.

What you might do with this site:  Use it as you would a secondary article, since that is evidently what it is.  The web value-added is simply images and accessibility.  Check the library and the databases for related publications.

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Copyright © Cathryn Carson 2002