A new website – Scotland’s History – launched today, designed to make the complex and lively history of this country available to people anywhere and of a wide age spectrum.

A reconnaissance visit lasted longer than intended – itself proof of the right degree of stickiness.

Developed under the aegis of Learning & Teaching Scotland, the site – in design as well as content, has managed to avoid the sterility of the academic while retaining strength in depth of information and variety of information sources.

Information is not presented in apparent chronology. Page ‘menus’ look more like a collection of tags, set with a random look and varying from large to small type. This encourages ‘a dip in and see’ness which is open, playful and responsive to the individual mind.

Some times you find yourself needing a chronological context for something you’ve dived into – and the logic that suggests how you might find this is spot on.

As you open up one topic the menu on the left hand side bar expands to offer even more possibilities.

You can – and we did – spend far more time than you know – just browsing around, bumping into a mixture of surprises and explanations of things that had always been on the fuzzy side.

Serious academic expertise lies behind the content on the site and it is worn lightly but not trivially.

Loot we came away with included discovering the Ballachulish Goddess and a quite horrifically  bloodthirsty letter from Henry VIII.  El Gordo was ordering the putting to death by fire and sword of every man, woman and child in Edinburgh, Leith and Fife who offered obstruction to his army when attempting to enforce the engagement of Edward VI to Mary Queen of Scots – which the Scots had just broken off.

One aspect worth revisiting is the way in which links to other online sources are used and presented.

Making use of such materials is sensible and necessary but the way they are presented on the page tends  – at first click – to disguise the fact that these are links to external sites. When you get there, it can be something of a shock to discover that the whole procedure of information presentation has suddenly changed – then you realise you’re on another site.

The different procedures do dilute and confuse the central concept of the main site. This cannot be fine tuned overnight but some homogenisation would reward attention.

There may be room for the quiet introduction of some more dates to set specific events more securely in time – like the last mentioned above. But this site makes history attractive by offering browsing as a valid means of access without preventing the ever-organised from following their own line.

Using the site may actually enable people to develop a sense of structure by becoming conscious of imposing their own on what and how they chase.

It’s now been added to our Links Directory, under Genealogy and History and Information Sources.

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