Don Mabry’s Historical Text Archive is a Web directory providing access to books, articles and Web sites on topics relating to history and the teaching of history. Examples of the topics covered include Africa, Genealogy, Islamic history and Psychohistory. The webmaster for this site is Don Mabry, a professor of history and director of the Institute for the Humanities at Mississippi State University. Peter Scholing is an associate webmaster. And apart from this, there is not much more information about the site. I searched for information on how sites are submitted to Mabry’s site. I searched for information on how an evaluation of the sites is done or if one is done at all. I searched for information on how to use the site. Unfortunately, nothing was found. That is the prime problem with this site: the lack of information.
I come to Don Mabry’s Historical Text Archive and immediately have a certain distaste for the site. On either side of the page are long lists of advertisements for a wide variety of sites ranging from the relevant, such as The History Channel, to the non‐relevant, such as ebay. I am not sure of the link here. Perhaps this is just the reality of the day – maintaining a Web site does require additional support. I then turn to the resources listed. Mabry has arranged them in certain categories with broad headings. Unfortunately, some of the headings are rather vague and the site would benefit from additional information on what is meant by these categories. For example, there is a category for Services. What are services? Then there are some oddities. There is a heading for Europe. And out of all of the European nations, only Hungary gets its own sub‐heading with a link from the main page. Nothing against Hungary, but why is this one country isolated? I also see that each continent has a separate entry in the listing as well as certain countries such as New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the USA. OK, but what about South America? South America has no entry … Oh, but then I notice the entry for Latin America. There are two listings for the USA. One is simply “United States”. The other is “United States/The West”. Does this mean that the first entry is for the east only and that if I want California, I go under United States/The West? An indication of what is found in each of these categories is essential. Frustrating.
Without any indication of how to start using this site, I click on the Articles, Books for Africa link. I do find a listing of articles and books that are relevant to Africa. Some of these entries look very useful, such as agreement between Germany and France relative to Morocco, February 9, 1909. Unfortunately, because there is a long list of titles with no indication of content it is hard to be sure how useful they would be. An example is the entry French Consuls in Morocco. What exactly is covered in this entry? Dates covered? Is this a current list of consuls? A brief indication of the material found in this link would be extremely useful.
I then turn to the links for Africa. I am taken to a second page with a listing of the divisions found on the Africa links page. Unfortunately, the listing appears to be very erratic with no logical arrangement. An alphabetical arrangement of the divisions would be beneficial to everyone. As it is, if I want Chad, I have to look through each entry until I find Chad in the fourth column, fourth entry, right after Zaire. Then, I start to use the page. I notice that at the top part of the page is a Search box. So, without any instructions as to how to use this box, I simply type in Mandela as a search term. Unfortunately, I only find one entry. A simple search in Google, however, lists 462,000 pages including a biography of Mandela (www.anc.org.za/people/mandela.html).
The other problem with this site is the lack of updating. Take, for example, the History of Mathematics link. There are only seven links. The most current was added on April 19, 2001. Several years have passed. Now, compare this entry with one that I easily found at the British Society for the History of Mathematics Web site (www.dcs.warwick. ac.uk/bshm/) which has an outstanding Web Site on the History of Mathematics, by June Barrow‐Green, last updated January 2, 2003. When we go to this site we find links to 91 sites as at February 18, 2003. This is a model for Don Mabry to emulate. A Web site is only useful if it is kept up to date.
Don Mabry must also understand the importance of providing relevant information on the Web site. What is kept on the site? How often is it updated? Is there an evaluation of the sites? How are new sites added? Perhaps this is the librarian in me coming through but I beg for further information. Until this Web site is re‐organized in a logical manner, and information is provided on the site, it is not recommended.
