Joy of Story Listening

Reviewed by Ann Neel

This site was originally created in 1996 by Barry McWilliams. After searching and finding the original homepage, the site was updated in 2002. McWilliams website contains the categories of: Stories with background information and telling tips, two author and illustrator profiles, sources of story material, links to sources of authors and writers of literary tales, and a connections to online libraries link. This website is very well set up. The headings are easy to read and the information provided is detailed and accurate. This site is intended for storytellers to be able to find various sources for use in finding a proper story. The sources of story material is very detailed and has several sites for the researcher to look under to find original and versions of tales from different countries. Each tale has the country that the tale originated from for easy access. This site also very clearly articulates the importance of ethics and story telling etiquette. There are several problems that I found with this site. Is it hasn’t been updated in a year, so some of the old links may not be functional. Also this site is a .net site which means it comes from an individual. The credibility of Barry McWilliams cannot be established based on the information provided on this site. Eldrbarry’s Joy of Storytelling is a very complete site, but I would recommend it with reservation simply because the credibility is not known.