With Encyclopaedia of British History, 1700‐1950, history teacher John Simkin has provided a wealth of useful information pertaining to the history of modern Great Britain. The site is organized mainly around historical biography, with some geographical terms and explanations of important historical documents also included. The content is quite extensive, with information on British monarchs, prominent members of Parliament, Parliamentary legislation, social history of women and slavery, and many other areas of interest to students of British history.
One of the drawbacks of this site is in its presentation. There are many lists of links to material, but some further organization would greatly improve navigation. The author provides a long list of links that users will need to scroll past advertisements to view, and there seems to be little order to these. Organizing the links by broad topic would help users locate needed information more quickly. The author also has links to other sites he hosts, many relevant to other periods of British history, which could be more clearly laid out and organized. Once inside a topic area, relevant hyperlinks are included to assist users with finding related information. The lack of graphics is a further weakness. While there is usually a small image associated with each entry, larger ones would assist users with differing learning styles. Yet another issue that could be improved is searchability. While the author has provided some search functionality using the Google search engine, this is not optimal for sifting through the large amounts of textual information on this site. A better search engine, perhaps using a small controlled vocabulary as well as keyword searching, would be a tremendous addition. This site also cries out for scanned versions of historic documents, which one hopes will be added as it evolves. The several advertisements on this site are discreet and tasteful and do not detract overmuch from the content.
As for the authority of the author and publisher, it would be useful if this was made clearer. The author’s brief biographical sketch (which is rather hard to locate) indicates that he has been a history teacher since 1978 and is a big believer in online history education. It would be useful to know a little more about his educational background and teaching qualifications.
This site is part of a larger effort, Spartacus Educational, which the author developed to further his beliefs about teaching history and the Internet. There are a staggering number of topics covered by this wider site, which would be worth examining in its entirety. While the site under review covers a specific time period, the author provides links to other time periods within this site. Perhaps the title should be changed to reflect the broader coverage available. For example, information on all monarchs from Edward the Confessor (1052‐1066) to George VI (1936‐1952) is included, although the link to this section is labeled “The Monarchy: 1750‐1950”. No obvious bias is evident in the content that the reviewer examined.
While this site is not the best available for the teaching of history, it is useful as a place to look for information on the history of modern Great Britain, especially short and to‐the‐point biographies of key figures. While many free sites dealing with British history exist, and subscription databases such as Gale’s History Resource Center do a better job with the topic, this is the best free site as far as the reviewer is aware. It would be useful in public libraries, school libraries, and possibly undergraduate libraries as a starting point for more in‐depth research. While it has areas for further growth and improvement, this free resource is still a worthwhile place to start a research project on British history.
