We are reporting live from the St. George Family History Expo. We have had a great first day talking to everyone and getting to hear some great family history stories and experiences. We love to hear from you about what you like and what we can improve on our site. Thank you for all the support. We’ve seen some familiar faces and new ones and are enjoying every minute. Everyone has been super nice and positive. We hope anyone here can come visit us at our booth (Booth #208) and talk about family history with us.

We had a class lecture on “Everything You Wanted to Know About Footnote.com” today at 4:30 in the afternoon. Tomorrow we are going to be speaking again at 1:00 p.m. in the Entrada – BC  lecture room on “How to Best Search and Browse Footnote.com Content”. This will be a great class to learn some tips on how to best search the 63 million images on Footnote.com.

Tomorrow will be another great day. We will be here to answer all your questions and concerns. Let us know what historical collections you’d like to see added to Footnote.com. And don’t forget about the prize drawing at the end of the day. Footnote.com will be giving away a total of 3 annual memberships.

Here at Footnote HQ, we’ve been working on some ways to improve the image viewing and browse experience.

We’ve received some great feedback from those of you who use the site and have tried to address the issues you’ve raised.

In the newer viewer, images should load faster, be easier to use and be more connected to the images around them.

Here are some of the specific things that should make image viewing better:

1. Improved “About image” panel contains image details, contributions others have made and an easy way to add your own insights.
2. Combined breadcrumb and browse make getting to other images faster and easier and we’ve added infinite browse columns to make browsing faster.
3. Floating toolbar includes all the old favorites plus fit and fill buttons and a new magnifier tool.
4. Annotation and spotlight displays will only show when your cursor is over them, so they don’t clutter up the image.
5. “Find in image” now searches everything in the “About” panel and any text that was indexed using Optical Character Recognition (OCR).
6. New “Share” options include popular sharing sites and links for embedding images on your own blog or website.
7. Updated filmstrip will show your zoom area, what’s been added to an image, whether or not it’s in your gallery and will even let you move around the image.
8. New next and previous buttons let you get to nearby images without using the filmstrip.

We aren’t quite ready to release these changes into the wild, but there is an early version of the viewer that we’ve been testing with our library users.  You won’t see all the improvements and some things have changed from this version, but you can take the library version for a test drive here.

We’ll post more details and tips for using the new viewer once it’s ready to go.

If you have comments, questions or suggestions regarding the image viewing experience on Footnote, please let us know.

Footnote.com continues to improve their historical collections of original records. Every day thousands of original records are being uploaded to the site via partnerships with the National Archives, Gannett Media and others. With over 62 million documents, Footnote.com has one of the largest collections of historical records found anywhere on the internet. Below are some of the collections that have been recently updated.

• Civil War Confederate Soldiers Records – a series of uncertain records collected by the War Department
• Civil War Widows Pensions – paper records that have never been microfilmed or digitized until now
• 1900 US Federal Census – includes addresses, year of immigration if foreign-born, if they lived on a farm, etc.
• 1910 US Federal Census – contains whether a person is a survivor of the Union or Confederate Army or Navy and more
• 1920 US Federal Census – includes citizenship, education, birthplace, native tongue, etc.

Click here for all updated content on Footnote.com.

On February 4, 1789, the Electoral College of the United States of America unanimously elected George Washington as the first President of the United States. While in the modern world the Electoral College has become a mere formality for electing the president, to the Founding Fathers, the election of George Washington represented a successful system that was created through extensive discussion and compromise in the Constitutional Convention. President Washington served two terms and remains the only president ever elected unanimously by the Electoral College. Learn more at the George Washington Page.

The image to the right is an account of President Washington’s Inaugural address of 1789.

Millions of people and thousands of institutions use Footnote.com to discover and make sense of history. Footnote.com, where history just might surprise you. What will you discover?

Footnote.com is celebrating Presidents’ Day with a special offer. Get full access to the 62 million images on Footnote.com with a President Grant ($50) for an annual subscription or President Lincoln ($5) for a monthly subscription. This special will last through the month of February.

Click here for the special Annual Subscription.

Click here for the special Monthly Subscription.

Footnote.com continues to add original historical record collections to the site. Adding thousands of records daily, Footnote.com is one of the largest collections of historical records found anywhere on the internet. The following collections are some of the new and updated collections that can be found on Footnote.com.

• Vietnam War Photos of the U.S. Army
• Texas Death Certificates
• City Directory of Minneapolis
• Homestead Records

Click here to view all the new and updated collections on Footnote.com.

Today Footnote.com announced a major addition to its Vietnam War Collection: Army Photos and Unit Service Awards. Now totaling over 100,000 photos and documents, this collection (in partnership with the National Archives) helps visitors gain better perspective and appreciation for this often misunderstood event in U.S. History.

“These documents and photos tell a part of the Vietnam War story that you just can’t find in textbooks,” explains Russell Wilding, CEO of Footnote.com. “It’s imperative that we preserve and share this side of history for future generations. We are encouraging everyone to come to Footnote.com and enhance these stories by adding their own comments, photots and documents.”

Some of the original historical documents found in this collection include:

• Army Unit Service Awards – including Presidential Unit Citations, Valorous Unit Awards and Meritorious Unit Commendations
• Army Photos – feature various activities of the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War
• The Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial – featuring service records for each name on the wall
• Photos of the Marine Corps in Vietnam in color
• Photos of the Marine Corps in Vietnam in black and white

Footnote.com will continue to work with the National Archives to add more Vietnam War content online.

Footnote.com was named the Best Genealogy Organization of 2009 by Tamura Jones. His site reviewed many of the industries products and sites and Footnote.com was listed as the best organization.

The article states that “Footnote simply did what it should be doing; continue to enlarge and improve its collections. It introduced the interactive census of 1930, and later announced it will make all the US census available this way.

“Footnote also worked with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to make the Holocaust Collection available.”

You can continue reading the review on Tamura’s site.

Footnote.com was named #16 on the Best Applications for Tech-Savvy Teachers by Rasmussen College. Rasmussen College wrote the following about Footnote.com.

“Footnote is a history teacher’s dream app, with more than 60 million original historical documents to peruse through. Users of Footnote can use the site to view never-before-seen historic documents from renowned institutions like The National Archives and The Library of Congress.”

To view the entire list of Best Apps for Tech-Savvy Teachers, please click here.

In honor of Pearl Harbor Day, we are making the largest interactive WWII collection on the web free to the public during December. Featuring over 10 million records, documents and photos from the National Archives, this collection helps family members and historians better understand the people and events of WWII.

Included in this exclusive collection is the Interactive USS Arizona Memorial. This online version allows people to view the actual wall of names and search for those they know. An interactive box for each name on the wall features additional information about each veteran and includes a place where anyone can contribute photos and stories. View the Captain of the USS Arizona, Franklin Van Valkenburgh, on the interactive wall.

It’s estimated that a little over 2 million WWII veterans are still alive in the United States today. However, thousands of veterans are passing away every month taking with them many of the stories from WWII. Footnote.com is making an effort to help preserve these stories by digitizing documents from the National Archives and providing interactive tools to help people connect with each other.

Christina Knoedler from Pennsylvania used the Missing Air Crew Reports on Footnote.com to discover information about her father-in-law, who is a WWII veteran. “The other night, I showed him what I had found,” explains Christina. “He couldn’t believe that these papers existed. They had not only his name but also his buddies’ names. He started to reminisce and it was quite an evening. This will allow me to go back and document many more events in our family’s history for the generations to come.”

The Missing Air Crew Reports are just one of the record collections found on Footnote.com. Other WWII collections on Footnote.com include:

• Pearl Harbor Muster Rolls
• U.S. Air Force Photos
• Submarine Patrol Reports
• Japanese Air Target Analysis
• Army JAG Case Files
• Navy JAG Case Files
• Naval Press Clippings
• Allied Military Conferences
• Holocaust Records

“People are making fascinating discoveries in these records,” says Russell Wilding, CEO of Footnote.com. “Reading some of the first-hand accounts helps you develop a different view and appreciation of our WWII heroes and what they went through.”

To experience the Interactive USS Arizona Memorial and the World War II visit www.footnote.com/wwii/.