Fold3 (formerly Footnote.com) launched a new website in January 2007 in partnership with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Footnote has already posted close to 9 million NARA documents and is adding 2 million documents per month! And these original documents are found no where else on the web.
Footnote.com is the only Web site wholly devoted to making digital images of American historical documents, said Susan Cooper, a spokeswoman for the U.S. National Archives.
The National Archives holds 9 billion pages of documents and it has no money to turn them into digital images, so it readily agreed to a partnership with footenote.com, she said.
Footnote has a very cool interface with an easy-to-follow browse page. It is quite an impressive site to see.
The name Footnote is very descriptive as this site encourages users to add "footnotes" or annotations to documents or pictures on the site.
Footnote also encourages members to add stories, the footnotes to history. You do not need to be a paid member to add or search the stories. Some of the stories I was saw yesterday were high school yearbooks complete with photos and student names, Surname Research Groups, Native American Heroes, & Black Spies of the Civil War. It is quite a diverse group of stories and growing every day. All free and searchable.
Some of the Footnote NARA Record Collections so far are:
- Naturalization Records 1792-1966 - Petitions and Declarations for NY, PA, MA
- Pennsylvania Archives 1625-1880 (a FREE database)
- Civil War Pensions Index 1865-1899
- Mathew B. Brady Collection of Civil War Photographs
- Confederate Soldiers AL, TX, VA
- Southern Claims Commission
- Revolutionary War Rolls
- Papers of the Continental Congress 1774-1789
- Papers of the Constitutional Convention 1787
- Federal Bureau of Investigation 1908-1922
- City Directories for New England States
No comments:
Post a Comment