The first site that I chose to explore was https://newroots.lib.unc.edu
What I found most attractive about this site was how it could be instantly translated into Spanish. Not only does this benefit many Spanish-speaking scholars, but it also helps a large portion of Hispanic people who either cannot read in English or lack the digital literacy to use other services to translate the page. Instead, there is a giant button in the middle of the page that translates the page fully. After reading the selected chapters from the digital history book and from my experience online, I have come to appreciate the value of accessibility of websites. Apart from that it is very well organized, it has many qualities that are mentioned in the book such as XML search, good fonts, a good mixture of colors, and a plethora of different types of media including videos and audio recordings that span from 10 minutes to over an hour. I found that I had an easy time navigating the site and it made me interested in the material that was there.
The second site I chose was https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu
I chose this one because it was an archive of digitalized images which is similar to what I and my group will be doing over the course of the semester.
The most interesting aspect of this site was the organization. It has much information not only on the content of the artifact but where it came from, its source type, its citation, etc. The site was also remarkably simple, it had a menu bar and an XML search box, but apart from that, there was not too much else on it which made it less cluttered than many other sites. The menu leads to all of the relevant sections that one would want to go to, which helped in the navigation of the site overall.
I feel like both sites have certain aspects that I like and that I found in the book too. I hope to continue doing some research on ways that I can contribute to the brainstorming for our scrapbook site!
I also looked at the New Roots website, and I agree that the ability to translate the website into Spanish is incredibly important, since it makes the information on the site accessible to so many more people. I think that accessibility to the web and to history is vital and I hope to ensure that for the project I am working on, we can make the history of the University of Mary Washington to more people, and ideally our website will also be designed in a way that makes it as accessible as possible.
Upon looking at St. John’s College Collections site, I agree with you about its simplicity and organization. The collections are easy to navigate, and search bars are always helpful. Even though I found the navigation intuitive, I think the help button was a nice touch, since it can provide additional navigation assistance for anyone who may need it.