The BBC History Website

The BBC History website is operated by the BBC television network, a public corporation owned by the government of the United Kingdom. Most of its information is comprised of articles written by university professors, independent historians, journalists, or other experts of history. Usability is good, as its menu system is easy to use as well as aesthetically pleasing. The Website offers four main categories: Ancient History, British history, World Wars, and Recent History. Each of these main groups is then split up into more specific sub-categories, which include both articles and interactive maps that contain information regarding the geographical location of key historical sites. On presentation, I should add that these maps are surprisingly well done, containing almost as much information as the articles, combining excellent graphics with a very use-friendly menu system.

The content on this site appears to be organized according to how much information the web designers were able to find about each topic. For example, in the Ancient History section, there are specific categories for the Romans, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons, and British Prehistory. Articles related to other Ancient Civilizations are lumped together in one category labeled Other Cultures, possibly owing to the fact the number of examples of wide interest may be limited and that available content on them could be modest. Other forms of information are available for historical events that took place within the last century.

The website provides a variety of vehicles to transmit content. Photographs are accompanied by audio describing the event captured in the picture, as well as radio broadcasts by Winston Churchill and FDR, for instance. One problem I encountered at this site was that when I attempted to listen to Winston Churchill’s wartime speeches, I received a “page could not be found” error. It was a bit frustrating, but it turned out to be temporary problem. Indeed, a website run by such a large corporation can be expected to have the resources to solve such a problem quickly. The interactive movies that can be found on the site are collages of old photographs as well as sound bites of different people commenting on the event. There is realism in sound bites, as they sound as if they were taken from news broadcasts from the era of the event portrayed.

Scholarship is reasonably good, with content that appears well researched. Articles, interactive maps, and interactive movies have sections attributing due credit in an extremely thorough manner. In fact, the thoroughness of the credits in this website is what influenced me to review it. My first choice had been an amateur site about the Roman Empire where I could not find any record of the creator, or bibliography, besides the authors of some articles. In contrast, the BBC took no chances on this website, as every source of information is properly cited.

The parent company of the project is a news network, so naturally one could have expected the website to reflect news media to a large extent. However, there was not much news media to be found. In fact all that I could find was located in the Recent History section, which is understandable (modern news media did not exist during many of the other historical categories). The Recent History section was in fact comprised of mostly news media concerning only three subjects: The war in Iraq, the attacks of September 11, and the conflict in Northern Ireland. Probably the three recent historical events most relevant to the British public.