The year 2002 was the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the then unknown lands of the American west.  If you log on to the Internet search engine Yahoo, you can search the web for “Lewis and Clark.”  Using this search, Yahoo finds over 70 available web sites.  One such site is listed and evaluated below.

The site is: “Lewis and Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery.  Comprehensive Companion to Ken Burns’ Documentary Film from PBS Online.”

Relevance: Even the briefest scan of this site proves that it focused directly on our subject.

Currency:  Scanning the pages of this site we see that it was copyrighted in 1997.  No date of update is given.  A date of 1997 is, however, current.

Author’s Credentials: The site indicates that it is the official companion site to the TV documentary of the same name that was written and produced by Ken Burns.  Checking the Contemporary Authors Cumulative Index, we find that the most recent discussion of Ken Burns is found in volume 79.  This essay on Ken Burns includes pages 84 – 88.  In this essay we find that he has a Bachelor’s Degree, but that this is also one of many TV documentaries such as “The Civil War” that he wrote and produced.  For a number of these documentaries he has received nominations and many prestigious prizes such as the Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary, the People’s Choice Award, etc. 

Content: This site is a very complex site with a great deal of information.  Some of its features include a timeline of the expedition, biographies of the important members of the expedition, excerpts from the expedition’s daily diaries (“journal”), information about the individual Indian tribes who dealt with the expedition, etc.  

Bibliography: From the second page of the site you can access the bibliography by clicking on the word “Sources” found in one of the left-hand columns.  A full list of the sources used in researching for the TV series and this web page can be found here.  In addition, clicking on the term “Related Links” provides a list of other very useful web sites to visit.  This list includes some government and school related web pages as well as some web sites hosted by surviving Indian tribes. Using such sites can provide great depth and understanding to your research.