Website Evaluation

For the website evaluation, I looked at a website with which I am already familiar - in fact, I've used Perseus for several years while translating. Throughout the activity, I learned more about the website and its publisher than I had known before, which is interesting, but because I chose a website which I already trust, the exercise - in relation to this specific site - felt almost pointless.

I do think that the criteria on the worksheet - lack of bias, accuracy of information, trustworthiness of the creator and publisher - are good ones to keep in mind when looking at new websites. I won't always be using websites as widely known and used as Perseus*, and so I will need to know how to judge them without outside help.


*Perseus is a resource well-known to all Classicists. I have heard professors as well as older students recommend it, and it is one of the few universal resources that everyone recognizes. I've actually seen Latin students reference it online on social blogging sites such as Tumblr. Other similar resources include the Latin Library Online, Cassell's Latin Dictionary, Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar, Wheelock's Latin, the Oxford Classical Dictionary (the OCD), and the Oxford Latin Dictionary (the OLD). These are the Encyclopedia Britannica, Harbrace, and MLA Handbook of our field.