The homepage for H-CivWar is clean and well organized and contains the following statement:

Welcome to H-CivWar, a member of H-Net Humanities & Social Sciences OnLine. H-CivWar is the H-Net discussion list dealing with the culture and history of the Civil War.

The homepage contains links to five major categories: General Information, containing generic material common to most H-Net discussion groups; H-Civ Resources, the heart and soul of the community; Related Links to additional H-Net Sites; Recent Messages, containing the latest postings on the discussion board; and Recent Reviews, containing the most recent reviews of new publications. Navigation around the site is simple aided by a search engine that can search only the H-CivWar Logs or all H-Net logs.

The first time I visited the site, I searched the discussion logs for various topics such as religion, sermons, and churches with interesting results. I discovered that there is a small but active community here interested in the same issues as I am. Then I searched for the United States Christian Commission, a group I am interested in studying, and found that there were no results. This surprised me; I thought that perhaps others would be looking at this, but apparently not. The second time I visited the site, the search function was apparently not available, and I repeatedly received the following message:

Software error:
Search failed at /home/web/logsearch/index.cgi line 276, <0> line 15.
For help, please send mail to the webmaster (webstaff@mail.h-net.msu.edu), giving this error message and the time and date of the error.

I sent a message and tried to search again several hours later, still to no avail. A second way to search the discussion logs is by month. This is a productive if somewhat time-consuming process. Logs can be searched for each month by date, topic or author. One can also move forward or backwards among messages in a particular “thread.” Actually, this is somewhat deceptive as this function simply moves forward or backward among all messages regardless of thread. Navigation would be improved if there were an actual listing of individual threads that could be selected from a single menu. H-South has such a list of threads which seems makes searching the messages much easier. Another minor complaint is that one cannot go directly from the discussion logs back to the H-CivWar homepage. The user must either use the “back” button in the net browser or go first to the H-Net homepage. That said, the Dialogue Logs remain a valuable tool and the center of this virtual community. The community nature of this site is brought home by July 1993 postings by our own Jane Turner Censer.

So I moved on to look at the rest of the community. The Book Reviews are listed alphabetically and can be searched by name, author, and other categories. I searched for a review of Edward L. Ayers new book to without success, although I did find a review in a message posted in the discussion log.

The Syllabus Index is disappointing as it only contains four listings. I later learned from one of the postings (12/6/02) that the Syllabus Index has been inactive for sometime and that the curator, Robert Harris of Binghamton University, is trying to revive it. Apparently, this revival has yet to gain momentum.

Now the question remains: Is this truly a virtual community? I believe that it is primarily due to the nature of the threads in the discussion logs. Most postings are (a) queries or requests for information or support or (b) responses to these requests. One particularly interesting thread (November 2002) was on the question of slave ownership by Lee and Grant . Members provided much useful information as a result of a query and all members benefited. Other messages include job postings, book reviews, calls for papers, and tables of contents for related publications. In this sense, H-CivNet may be compared to a community bulletin board. But it is much more than simply a place where people post announcements. There are real-time conversations taking place here among diverse persons over extended periods of time. Many of the names I encountered from the initial postings in 1993 are still active now ten years later! In other words, this is not your basic AOL chat-room. It is a unique and enduring web presence that does something not possible in any other media.

Finally, a mention must be made of selectivity. Only members are allowed to participate in the discussions although anyone can read the dialogue logs. Membership is restricted to professors, teachers, students, and independent scholars. This is not a site for the history enthusiast but an important resource for “serious” historians. A potential member must fill out an application and send it to the curator and wait. I submitted my application several days ago. I am still waiting.

Ron Maggiano