EVALUATING INTERNET RESOURCES

The Internet is a valuable resource if used correctly. Researchers should evaluate all web sites they use based on the criteria listed below as well as personal good judgement. Information now exists everywhere on just about every topic, be sure to plan a search strategy for an internet site just the as you would when using a database. If a site appears to be unreliable in content reevaluate your search string and/or move on to your next search option.

Authority

• Who created this web site?
• Do they provide information on their background, experience, and credentials?
• Is the site maintained by a well-known or reputable organization (e.g. the American Psychological Association, American Cancer Society, etc)?

Objectivity and Reliability

• Are the facts that are known to you reliable?
• Is the coverage objective? If not, is the bias clearly stated?
• Is the site sponsored by a commercial organization? Is it trying to sell you something?

  Scope

• Who is the intended audience? Is this site for scholarly purposes or just for fun?
• Are both sides of an issue or topic provided?
• What geographical area is covered?
• What time period is covered?
• Is this the original document or has it been edited or abridged in some way?

  Currency

• Does the web site give a date when it was last updated?
• If so, has it been updated recently?
• Is some of the information clearly out of date?
• Are there many links that are broken and no longer connect to the resources listed? Broken links can be an indicator that a web site is not being updated regularly.

INTERNET RESOURCES TO EXPLORE AND COMPARE

Commercial and Travel Web Sites

• Abaxion - an internet vendor for medieval, occult and other merchandise.
• http://www.medieval-france.com – not the most useful site
• New York Carver - a commercial site
• Irish Castles – nice, but a personal travel site
• Roads to Ruins - fun, about all kinds of castles, not a very serious site

  Biblical Material

• To do a word search of the Bible, see Gospel Search

  General Sites

• Médiathèque de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine --part of the French Ministry of Culture
• Memoire: Base Iconographique This French patrimony site is quite a esource, though with a buggy interface and a large percentage (10%, at least) of errors in identification.
  • Virgin & Child stained glass window
    medieval sarcophagus
  Here are samples from the Memoire web site:
• Nixnet Medieval The Online Source for Art History of the Middle Ages.
• ORB Online Reference Book: for Medieval Studies.
• Netserf The Internet Connection for Medieval Resources. NetSERF's goal is to provide those interested in any aspect of the Middle Ages a single index of all the best medieval resources available on the Internet.
• ICMA International Center of Medieval Art The International Center of Medieval Art.
• Mediaevum.de: Medieval Studies on the web. This Internetportal, provided by three german Medievalists, contains a systematic and annotated overview over Internetpages of interest for Medievalists as well as a database of current projects of research.
• Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline
• ArtServe The Australian National University web site with a lot of pictures from museums and local parish churches.
• Web Gallery of Art
• The Virtual Chartres Cathedral

  Stained Glass

• Corpus vitrearum France
• Piletus A good stained glass site for France
• Notre Dame de Chartres A personal web site with incredible pictures.

  Architecture

• A Glossary of Architectural terms
• Art-Roman A fabulous site for French Romanesque architecture and sculpture.
• Vezelay A great website on Vezelay (although all in French).
• L'Architecture Religieuse en Occident Chefs-d'oeuvre de l'architecture religieuse occidentale et rep`eres historiques et artistiques.
• Castles of the World Reference for castles, palaces and monasteries including: castle tours, medieval architecture, hotels, travel, plans, weddings, castles for sale, souvenirs, books, directory, site of the week, history, armor and swords.
• Castles of Wales Monuments and medieval castles of Wales.

  Sculpture

• The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland is a British Academy Research Project hosted by the Courtauld Institute of Art. It is a fully searchable text and image database application, the intention of which is record all extant Romanesque sculpture.
• Gothic Sculpture

  Manuscript Illumination

• Bibliotheca PalatinaThe University Library and the Art Historical Institute of the University of Heidelberg have announced completion of a 2-year project to digitize and post on the Web with extensive annotations and a search engine twenty-seven late medieval illustrations manuscripts from the Bibliotheca Palatina. These contain a wealth of depictions of literary and biblical characters (there's a 5-vol. Bible, both testaments), saints (one of the texts is the Elsässische Legenda Aurea), plants, animals, and other natural phenomena, and genre images of all sorts (esp. agricultural implements and arms and armor). In addition to searching for specific items of interest, one can use the freetext capability of a search under "Ikonographie" to call up a page of thumbnails of all the illustration in a given text by entering in the adjacent box the name of one the texts represented in this collection (e.g., "Eneas," the same results come up with "Veldeke" but there are of course texts whose authors are unknown).
• Les Tres Riches Heures Du Duc De Berry Pictured in this collection are the individual pages of the calendar section of the manuscript painted between 1412-1416.
• Leaves of Gold Treasures of Manuscript Illumination from Philadelphia Collections.
• Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts From the collection of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek.
• Illuminated Manuscripts From the Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum (browseable by ICONOCLASS).

  Wall Paintings

• Medieval Wall paintings in Danish Churches A database of over 3000 images.
• Medieval Wall Painting in the English Parish Church A Developing Catalogue.

  Other objects of interest

• The devotional museum

ASSIGNMENT:

• Please list the search engine(s) you used to complete this assignment:

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• Please list three search strings you created while working on this assignment:

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• Locate TWO valuable websites related to your paper topic that are NOT included in the list above. List the URL's for both of these sites and using the evaluation criteria on page one of this handout discuss why they are valuable.

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• Locate TWO unreliable websites related to your medieval cathedral architecture that are NOT included in the list above. List the URL's for both of these sites and using the evaluation criteria on page one of this handout discuss why they are unreliable.

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