Identifying and Evaluating Major Data Resources on the Internet

This past week we have had the assignment to investigate and analyze some online data resources that were provided for us as well as find and analyze some resources on our own.  My findings can be found here.  I was surprised by how some online resources that one would think would have their data accessible online did not.  One of these was the National Archives which had broken the link that our professor had given us due to some internal reorganization.  For the most part, if someone was looking for genealogical or census data, he or she would need to either pay for some microfiche to be sent to them, or to travel to a National Archive site for free access.  The National Archive site closest to Milwaukee, WI is in Chicago.  After that, the next closest is in Lancing, Michigan.  I was very surprised to find out that there is no site located in either the capital city of each state or in the major universities located all over the U.S.  However, I did find out that the only reason that this is the reality, is that there is just too much that needs to be stored in the National Archives to be able to digitize it all and maintain it online.  That being said, I am glad there are some enterprising individuals (such as the creators of Ancestry.com and Heritagequest.com) that are doing what they can to make this available for a fee.

Surveys, Analyzing Data and Other Questions

This week, we actually created a survey, solicited responses, and analyzed the data.  We chose to do a survey on who preferred the books and movies of the Lord of the Rings series or the Harry Potter series.  The link to our survey can be found here.  The results can be found here.  We were initially of the mindset that younger people (under 30)  would prefer Harry Potter, and older people (30+) would prefer Lord of the Rings.  One of the reasons we thought of this, is that people who are younger probably have not been exposed to Lord of the Rings, while Harry Potter has been almost universally known among readers.  The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings series should have been more known by those who are older and were exposed to the books and original cartoon movies when they were newer.  Our group found that younger readers preferred Harry Potter, while older readers were more evenly distributed.  Males preferred Lord of the Rings by a margin of 2 to 1.  Females were reversed preferring Harry Potter by a margin of 2 to 1.  One thing that I wish we included were questions about if the survey taker was into role playing games (table top or online), Society of Creative Anachronism or LARPing (Live Action Role Playing).  I have a feeling that that would have been able to give us more information about the two series.  The people I knew had taken the survey and asked about it, the people who were into AD&D, online games, etc. seemed to prefer Lord of the Rings.  This might have to do with the fact that Lord of the Rings is not a book series for a person who has not been introduced to a "hard-core" fantasy series.