The only context provided in 'The Fifties Web' is internal.  The 'Pop History' section tells of 'the Fifties' story' with factual information on a range of subjects from economics and consumer culture, to sport and major national and international events.   Also included are the names of celebrities born that year, which is not intrinsic to the culture of the fifties itself, and so reveals a slight comparison to the culture or experience of later decades, but makes no attempt to relate the differences or significance.  Some of these 'Pop History' facts contain a hypertext link, with potential to increase the range of context through, for example, linking externally.  However, most links take you to a short summary of related information, such as the list of oscar winners for that year.
One fact stated that the contraceptive pill was developed but not yet introduced.  This is crucial information relating to women's status and role in society.  It is relevant to other sections of the site which describe Women's Dress and TV Families.  Candace even makes the comment concerning the mothers in TV families that:

"While it all seems rather silly and innocent now, I am part of a generation who thought these women were what we were supposed to grow up to be. "

Does this mean that 'The Fifties Web' is primarily a descriptive site?  To a degree, yes, the additive and encyclopaedic nature of the web is utilised to provide much data on this topic.  However, 'The Fifties Web' provides more integral analysis than an unembellished 'research' site, such as the NDN.  Although, without the research focus, the context and analysis does not reach the stage of comparing and contrasting, more interested in the internal value of each source.  This has resulted in a limited socio-political and economic context for the cultural sources of 'The Fifties Web'.  None of these pieces exist in isolation in this site, but even the cultural context would need to be pieced together by the user from the evidence of the other topic sections, since intertopic links are not provided.

The NDN similarly provides only internal context, without external links.  The 'Research and Study' section containing the archives, is almost entirely free from context, except by virtue of the other images and documents located in surrounding sub-categories and categories.  The begging question of how or why images and articles were recorded, for example, are not answered.  The 'Features' section works to provide context for their chosen sources.  For a research-based site, these features provide an example of how to create historical analysis and use the hypertext medium, although not many of these take the analysis and hypertext use to a high level.  This section is an important addition to the site in terms of addressing the issues of context and analysis.  However, they remain merely examples when addressing the need for context of the wider archive base.   As a research-focussed site, unlike 'The Fifties' Web', the NDN is aware of the purpose of comparing and contrasting to provide analysis.  The flip side to this focus, is that the NDN is apprehensive to 'interfere' with the purity of the sources by providing elements of this itself.  Furthermore, it does not acknowledge the analysis already undertaken by the site, in categorising the sources.

In summary, neither of these sites take full advantage of the hypertext medium to provide context for their sources through internal or external linking.  Only internal context is provided and this is mediated by the purpose and intended audience of the site.  A crucial distinction is the purpose of research: in keeping archives 'pure', research sites miss the opportunity to provide context  which could aid the researcher to make informative analysis.  'Fan' sites are less hesitant to surround their sources with context, however incomprehensive, but steer clear from extending their analysis, ever more facilitated by hypertext, due to the perceived purpose of their users.

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