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Reviews The Canadian History Portal, , accessed 29 December 2002. Created by the Canadian Historical Association and Chinook Multimedia, with assistance provided by the Millennium Bureau ofCanada, 2000 The main goal ofthis 'portal' is to provide a bilingual, annotated guide to Internet sources on Canadian history - a doorway to help students, teachers, and interested lay people find and separate the kernels from the abundance of digi-historical chaff. The site also promises some original historical resources, including thematic timelines, for children, students, and teachers. This is an ambitious project and a great idea. The portal as originally opened at the CHA meeting in May 2001 was full of promise: the design is handsome and the annotated site guides are useful. Now, almost three years into the project, the development of the site has stalled, with the promise only partially fulfilled. There is a need for this site. The great democratic potential oflnternet publishing - it is accessible to anyone who can afford a computer - is also its greatest drawback as a research tool. In the hierarchical world of print, scholars control the peer-review process and ensure certain minimum criteria for verifiability and reliability. Researchers rely on the authority of university presses and peer-reviewed journals, and, generally, or at least more often than not, find their trust well placed. The Internet has bypassed this elite control and, as a result, most of the historical sites are brimming with authors' indulgences, unadulterated by any review process. The limitations ofmultipurpose search engines and the overwhelming abundance of idiosyncratic and erroneous historical sites clutter the digital environment, confuse students, impede research, and discourage teachers from directing students to the Internet as a serious research tool. This site interjects at the right time in an appropriate way. The Canadian History Portal uses the legitimacy ofthe Canadian Historical Association and the Internet savvy of Chinook Multimedia to offer 282 The Canadian Historical Review researchers/teachers a list of recommended websites and inject some scholarly review into the medium, without interfering with the anarchicdemocracy ofthe Internet. The heart of the site is a database of brief reviews of over eight hundred websites on aspects ofthe history ofCanada. It does not rank or give ratings to the sites in the way that other portals have opted to do (perhaps the most ambitious of which is MERLOT - Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching, www.merlot. org). Instead, the annotations - largely the work of graduate students are general but usually include a comment on the originator (professor, enthusiastic amateur, historical organization) and a precis ofthe content. The site also has a great search engine that allows users to seek sites using complex criteria (chronology, language, region, town, key word). The true test of a portal is whether it opens a doorway - and this one does. A search ofthis database turns up a wide array of interesting and important sources that are otherwise buried. It is also bilingual, at least in its navigation, database, and aspiration. It is a major undertaking and much has been accomplished. There are problems too, some of which reflect the limited funds committed to this ambitious project and others which do not. Most ofthe former are common to ongoing projects. Money is often there to start them, but it is seldom there to maintain them. This is an especially grave problem with a database ofInternet sites, which has to be dynamic since websites shut down and start up every day. The portal is not being consistently updated. Major websites ofthe last two years are not here, so the database is now stale and will be useless in a couple of years. Funding is also a problem for the other resources promised on the site, including 'Kids, History Resources, Timelines and Teacher's Resources.' All are empty except the 'Timelines.' Another problem with the site is that it is not well known. Likely because it has never been 'completed' enough for a full launch, it has never been effectively promoted to the media or to other historical sites. The 'Timelines' section offers chronological entries, with a paragraph or two of encyclopedia-style explanation, for five themes: Aboriginal People, women, politics and economy, society and culture...

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