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Peer Review

Primary sources: US imigration

Reviewed:

Jan 5, 2010 by History
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Ratings

Overall Rating: 3.2 stars
Content Quality: 4.0 stars
Effectiveness: 3.0 stars
Ease of Use: 4.0 stars
Overview:

The heart of the site is the database that has passenger records for the millions of people arriving in New York between 1892 and the 1920s. Each record contains name, ethnicity, last place of residence, date of arrival, age at arrival, marital status, ship of travel, port of departure, and line number on the ship’s manifest. From the record of an individual passenger, one can see the original ship manifest (or read a text transcription of it). Ship manifests can also be found through browsing for a particular ship. Lesser sections of the site include historical information about Ellis Island, photo galleries, and information about how to do genealogical research. The site was created and is maintained by The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, and various aspects promote membership in the foundation and/or tourism. The site has some commercial sponsors and provides links to other resources for genealogy. Individuals may opt to join to use the detailed genealogy services that are provided.
Type of Material:

Reference
Recommended Uses:

The site (in the Privacy Policy) says that anyone under 13 using it should have a parent’s or guardian’s permission and be using that person’s account (registration is necessary to access many parts of the site), and it recommends getting permission if one is 13 to 18 years old. As a result, I would not recommend using it in a K-12 setting, even though I think a genealogy project might be a fun assignment for middle or high school. Other than doing genealogical research, there are few possible uses. One might be to take the six family stories that are available and base an assignment on those. These are stories of Americans who have done genealogy and located their roots in other countries. One could assign students to find out more about events mentioned in those stories, like the Holocaust or the 1911 Revolution in Mexico, or have students attempt to find similar kinds of records, such as baptismal records or marriage lines. Another might be to take the timeline of the history of Ellis Island as the starting point for additional research on New York City or immigration. I have a suspicion, however, that those same assignments could be grounded in other materials. Overall, I would recommend against using the site for a classroom project at any level.
Technical Requirements:

Mozilla Firefox or other web browsers.
Identify Major Learning Goals:

The site states no learning goals nor does it provide any guideance for teachers of any kind. The website seems to assume that visitors to it are mostly interested in doing genealogy searches. This site will provide students with background information on immigration. It also useful for tracking migration of individuals from Europe and other countries.
Target Student Population:

The target population for this website is History students in introductory level course. This website provides basic information and may also be used for students in middle school and high school
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

In terms of concepts, students would have to know something about immigration and about Ellis Island before attempting to find particular people’s arrival records. However, they could learn that information from the section of the site called “Ellis Island.” Students need to know how to do a search using parameters such as name, date of birth, date of arrival, ethnicity, etc. They also need to be able to read at a sixth-grade level. Students would not need to know much about genealogy, since the site provides a nice introduction to that subject.

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:

The individual passenger records and the ship manifests are primary sources that can give insight into the history of passenger liners as well as provide genealogical information for family history research. The quality of scholarship and accuracy of the information on the site is high as far as we can tell. The website is visually appealing,informative and accurate. There is a large quantity of information. It is very colorful, so students will want to click on the various features. Information is clearly organized according to topic.
Concerns:

The original manifests are difficult to read even when enlarged, and the text version does not seem to include all of the information on the manifests, such as hair color and height. Perhaps this is because The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation really wants people to buy replicas of the manifests. I was not impressed by site quality and coherence. The “Home” page has no overall introduction to the purpose or intended use of the site. Users are left completely on their own to figure it out. Primary sources are always historically significant, but for purposes of MERLOT, I rate sites’ historical significance based on the story students can learn from them. On this site, students cannot learn much about the overall history of immigration. Partly that is because of the way the searches are organized, only by personal name and ship name. One cannot search for all Irish who arrived in 1920, for example, or all people whose previous residence was Hanover who arrived in 1899. There is a little historical information about immigration in general and a very nice history of Ellis Island, but there is no breadth of perspective here. Everything is from the viewpoint of Ellis Island and from the viewpoint of locating particular people. That does not make the site very useful in class.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:
Strengths:

The site does have pages that have tips on how to do searches of its database and on how to do genealogy, both of which are helpful. If a teacher wished to introduce the students to how to find out more about their own family histories, this site might be useful. However, because of the trickiness of doing genealogy (name spellings changing, etc.), the project would have to be carefully designed and would not necessarily have to use this particular website. Since there are no lesson plans or anything else to guide teachers on the site itself, the teacher would have to look elsewhere for help in designing such a project.
Concerns:

There are no learning objectives on the site, no a special section for teachers, and no attempt to teach people to do anything other than genealogy. Because the database can be searched only by passenger and by ship, the site's usefulness in the classroom is extremely limited.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:
Strengths:

The site seems to be well maintained. The instructions for how to get started doing genealogy were excellent, and the instructions for how to search this database were good. Download time for searches was reasonably fast, even for a large search such as last name Patrick any year. It is very colorful so students will want to click on the various features. Information is clearly organized according to topic.
Concerns:

Once one figures out that the Dropdown menus had some links that clicking on the Navigation bar did not provide, the site is easier to navigate. For example, clicking on “Ellis Island” in the navigation bar gives access to brief descriptions of the “Ellis Island Immigrant Experience,” “Ellis Island History,” “Ellis Island Timeline,” “Ellis Island Photo Albums,” “Ellis Island Family Histories,” “Ellis Island & The Peopling of America,” and “Visiting Ellis Island.” The Dropdown menu has access to all of these but also includes “About AFIHC,” “Ellis Island Patriots,” “Annie Moore,” and “Presidential Travels.” This seems to me to be a design flaw. Even on a T1 line, there was a slight delay in opening ordinary pages, such as the “Ellis Island History” page. Instructions on how to search were clear once one found them on the Dropdown menu.
Other Issues and Comments:

The site, while free, requires users to register to receive any information about passengers or ships. This requires providing an email address, creating a username and password, and agreeing to the “Terms of Use.” The “Privacy Policy” says that the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation may use the information “to provide you with products or services and to inform you about additional products or services that may be of interest to you” and that it “may share personal information with third parties” including the site’s corporate sponsors. One can avoid that fate, however, by emailing historycenter@ellisisland.org to ask to end emails and third-party sharing. If that had not been possible, I would not have reviewed the site.
Creative Commons:
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