This week I took a break from editing our website. I plan today to look back at it today with fresh eyes so that I can fix and update it. Instead this week I reviewed and made comments on the St. Mary’s site using hypothesis. This was helpful for me because, not only did they use the same theme (Parabola) in WordPress, they also did a challenge about a book by Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon. I liked seeing the way they used Parabola to create their website and how they laid things out. It was helpful to see the way they set up their navigation because it lets me understand the way some people may approach a website, this will help me to make sure our website is approachable to as many people as possible.  I also like they information and especially the videos they included of Toni Morrison. I thought it was nice to hear her opinion on censorship, her process, etc.

Another thing I really enjoyed about their website was they way they incorporated all of their primary documents. Their website is a treasure trove of newspaper articles, and letters to and from the school board, as well as a large file containing the teachers collection of student writings on the book challenge. Because there were so many primary documents, they faced the challenge of incorporating all of the documents into the website while also providing context for the documents and connecting them to the case as a whole. I liked the way they provided the original documents, while also transcribing them into the pages to increase the ability to search for the text and the accessibility. I have to say I am very impressed with the amount of information on their site.

The main suggestion I had for them was to better connect their documents. After reading through all of their pages, I realized that I still didn’t really understand how everything fit together. I suggested that they add a few pages as jumping off points where they summarized what happened in their case, and give a master list of resources, linking out to pages where they go into more detail about different specifics on the case.