Browse Website Reviews

Discover quality websites on a range of topics and time periods. If a website link is no longer active, consult this guide to website URL paths for tips on locating the original resource.

Illustration of a red windmill

Colonial North America at Harvard Library

Colonial North America at Harvard Library is an ambitious project that seeks to digitise Harvard’s vast collection of materials related to the North American colonies, circa the 17th and 18th centuries.
Portrait of one of the Mancini sisters

The Letters of Marie Mancini

The site’s great strengths currently lie in its annotated translations and ease of use, with the team having obviously given some thought to how users might want to explore these letters.
Three youth carrying hoes against a green background

The Blavatnik Archive

...the Blavatnik Archive site does a great job of ensuring that a range of important archival material can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection
Black and white engraving of free people of colour in Saint Dominigue, two women and a man.

A Colony in Crisis: The Saint Domingue Grain Shortage of 1789

...the site’s method of limiting each translated entry to about 1000 words is a great way to foster greater engagement with these sources without being too much to handle at once.
People standing in a semi circle looking at the name of the website, Mapping the Republic of Letters in bold and cursive font

Mapping the Republic of Letters

Browsing the site, users are able to gain a deeper appreciation for how data visualisation can help academics examine previously well-known and well-utilised primary sources in new, innovative ways.
Part of a map of Scotland overlaid with illustrations of women, meant to signify witches, being placed at particular points.

Witches

Witches is well-conceived and equally well-presented project that takes our understanding of Scottish witchcraft one step further
Ilustration of a nurse against a red background

History of Medicine and Medical Humanities

...the Portal team are doing an excellent job of making the site a one-stop resource for everyone interested in the medical humanities
Cvliacanae, Americae regionis, descriptio. Hispaniolae, Cvbae, aliarvmqve insvlarvm circvmiacientivm, delineatio. Credit: dLOC

Digital Library of the Caribbean

Educators, students, and scholars interested in understanding the strategic conflicts between European powers, the experience of Africans during the transatlantic slave trade, the emergence of the modern capitalist system, and the rise of neoliberalism would find in dLOC a wealth of content to draw from for their studies and projects.

Crosby child's chair, made using multi-coloured moulded polyurethane resin and metal. Designed by Gaetano Pesce, made by Fish Design in New York.

Victoria and Albert Museum

The video series How Was it Made? demonstrates a variety of craft methods: Japanese hikihaku obi, medieval stained glass windows, and book printing and binding.
Outline of a man and woman running away, set against a background of advertisements.

Freedom on the Move

Freedom on the Move is a crowdsourced, multi-institutional effort to create and maintain a database of ‘runaway ads’.
Watercolour of a ship in a port, with the title Consolation Prize above it in brown text.

Consolation Prize

Consolation Prize is a fantastic podcast that comes highly recommended for anyone who has an interest in American history, or even for those who just enjoy well-told, solidly researched stories.

Anna Julia Cooper Collection

A highlight of the Collection are articles written and published by Cooper.

Enslaved Archive

The site also contains narratives and photographs of twelve slave interviews conducted as a part of the Federal Writers Project in 1937.

Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu

A legendary repository for scholars of Southeast Asia and researchers interested in the Chinese World Order, Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu is a veritable treasure trove of information on a dynamic region during a period of transcendental change.

Coins

Well worth its weight in gold—or silver seeing as most of the coins in the collection were made out of it—Coins is perhaps the pre-eminent example of digitisation and visualisation done right. It synthesises academic rigour, curatorial thoroughness, and a spirit of playfulness to bring cold, hard cash to life.

LSE Digital Library

The LSE Digital Library is an important and valuable archive chronicling not just the history of a storied institution but also British and global history more broadly.

Beijing Silvermine

A fascinating, confusing, and challenging photographic archive, Beijing Silvermine is on the one hand an important record of the lives of ordinary Chinese citizens living through two decades of transcendental change and on the other a somewhat problematic appropriation of their private lives.

Australia's Vietnam War

The project chronicles the Australian contribution to the American War in Vietnam and serves as an important means of disentangling both the conflation of the American and Australian experiences of the conflict as well as long-held myths regarding the role and conduct of Australian troops in Vietnam.
Spread of humanity map thumbnail

World History for Us All

Its units and lesson plans utilize a range of primary sources, which revolve around three themes are: Humans and the Environment, Humans and Other Humans, Humans and Ideas.
Sun rising over the earth

Big History Project

The student-centered work emphasizes cooperative learning, project-based assessments, use of rubrics, lesson quizzes and exams and countless creative writing activities.