Oregon State Archives

Site Name: Oregon State Archives

URL: http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/

Owner/Authorship: State of Oregon - Office of the Oregon Secretary of the State (Kate Brown)

Type of Resource: Document-based search website - contains images, text documents, audio clips

Description: The Oregon State Archives website contains all governmental archives from the history of the state of Oregon.  It contains links to governors' speeches, press released, and service records.  The site contains all records of legislative action and sessions in Oregon's history, and provides documentation on court cases as well.  Additionally, the site contains other primary source documents, archives, and the ever popular "Oregon Bluebook" information publication, which is updated every few years.  

Uses/Usefulness: This website would be greatly useful to social studies educators who are teaching units on Oregon history and government.  The Oregon State Archives contains countless records about the government of Oregon and other primary sources from Oregon's history.  The site is easy to navigate and the documents it contains would be great supplements to classroom instruction.  Additionally, students completing research projects about the state of Oregon would find the Blue Book section of the website to be extremely useful, as it contains basic and specific information about the state of Oregon (such as the state song, bird, motto, etc.) 

Quality: The website has an excellent layout, but no flash capabilities.  It is simplistic in style and design, but provides ample and useful links to information about the great state of Oregon.

Point of view/Bias: Limited - only found in primary sources on the website.  Some bias may also exist in what is presented on the website (based on the views of the current Secretary of State of Oregon).  

Referral to other sources: Links to other Oregon governmental websites, primary resource websites, etc.  

Verifiability: Links

Currency: Updated daily.  

Accessibility: WAVE (http://wave.webaim.org/) reports 2 accessibility errors - form label missing, empty table header