When we were building Footnote we knew we had to build something that would make sense of documents. A computer is not smart enough to read the text or handwritten copy found in most historical documents. That is where people come in.

The Annotation Tool, found in the Viewer (see more about the viewer), is provided as a way to let you label important information you find in documents.

Right now there are four types of annotations you can make:

• Name: for persons first & last name, titles
• Date: for any month, day, year
• Place: any location
• Text: for anything else

Annotating isn’t just helpful for searching, it’s now a good way to remember what documents you’ve found.
Go to your Profile page and browse annotations you have made. Clicking on any other Member name will show the same for them.
The Annotation page (See example page) will show you all of the annotations added by any Footnote Member and a link back to that image or help you perform a search using the information found in that annotation.

If you have a blog or a website be sure to add the Footnote Card to your site. In this example, you will see that this member ‘dbreckenridge’ has made several annotations that link back to their annotation history. (Go to Account > Footnote Card to get it, requires sign-in)
Every annotation made is instantly searchable making documents more findable for everyone. Get started annotating one of these free documents below. (Free Membership Required to annotate)

• Look for names in this roster from the Pennsylvania Archives
• This Hudson, MA City Directory has several names and locations

Annotating is now more than a way to make your favorite documents more findable for others, it’s also a way to make new friends.

In our example below, dvader, a Footnote Member, has kindly labeled a keyword in a document. Clicking on that Member’s name will now bring you to their Profile page showing, among other interesting stats, the total number of annotations they have contributed.

You can then choose to view all or specific types of annotations. In this case, we find that this Member has also annotated a name, John Gibbon, in another document, which we might also be worth exploring.

Rolling our mouse over the name will pop-up a thumbnail of the document and highlight where the annotation can be found. Try it now.

If we were researching that name and wanted to share some information, we could send dvader a quick message by clicking the “Contact me” button.

Important: The “Contact me” button will only show if you have checked “Yes, allow other Footnote members to contact me” in the Communications Settings page found in Your Account.

For now, Footnote sends that message to a Member via email. The recipient’s email is never revealed on the site and it’s up to them to respond.

We have some more robust Member communication tools in the works, but we hope this will be helpful in the meanwhile.

Another helpful feature is the ability to search from annotations. In the example below, I clicked on “Search for: John Gibbon” and quickly found a Matthew B. Brady portrait that I didn’t know we had.

Better viewing quality of your uploaded images

If The National Archives can trust us with its content, we hope you can, too. We archive all of your uploaded images for safe-keeping and have improved the Viewer quality for them.

Those of you who have uploaded content already, don’t worry. We kept copies of your images with their original quality intact. They have now been reprocessed to give you and others the best viewing experience possible.

Check out the detail in this map from the Library of Congress.

As always, we want to make Footnote better. So please don’t hesitate to send us your comments and other feedback.

Don’t believe us? Check it out for yourself. We’d like to thank Chris Fralic for discovering this. And while we’re on the topic, we’d also like to thank Mr. Ebay for his brave service, too.

Here at Footnote we enjoy reading about history. Here’s what’s been on our reading table:

• 1776 by David McCullough
• Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick
• Don’t Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned by Kenneth C. Davis

Each of these books reveals the history of something we all thought we knew in a fresh way leaving us hungry to learn more.

For example, 1776 tells the dramatic story about the start of the Revolutionary War richly detailed with all of the Colonists missteps, bravery, luck and perseverance.

It was the detail that brought the story to life, a result of tremendous amounts of research.

Inspired, I found myself searching for supporting documents and historic characters on Footnote. For instance, you can find several letters and writings from Nathaniel Greene, Henry Knox, and many others from that era. Jake, our IT guy, created a review of 1776 with some documents he found in the Letters from General George Washington supporting the book.

Because we like to read about history we also encourage people to write about history. And it doesn’t have to be some monumental event.

There is always a story to tell when looking back, whether it be about your own family, a time period, or particular interest you might have.

Try starting a Story Page today and add your footnote to history.

We are looking for volunteers to “test drive” the website on Thursday March 29th. We are looking for eight volunteers who are 40 years and older. This usability research will be extremely valuable to the team here at Footnote as we continue to make improvements to the site. The research usually takes only about an hour. In exchange for your time and valuable feedback all participants will receive a $25 gift certificate. The research will be conducted in Lindon, UT. Interested volunteers should send an email to eliz@footnote.com.

According to this story in The New York Times, not only is digitizing hard work - there’s a lot of it. The story summarizes well the challenges of making historic documents accessible online at the risk of being forgotten:

“For one thing, costs are prohibitive. Scanning alone on smaller items ranges from $6 to $9 for a 35-millimeter slide, to $7 to $11 a page for presidential papers, to $12 to $25 for poster-size pieces. (The cost of scanning an object can be a relatively minor part of the entire expense of digitizing and making an item accessible online.)”

For many there is a misunderstanding of just how little is currently available on the web:

“If researchers conclude that the only valuable records they need are those that are online they will be missing major parts of the story. And in some cases they will miss the story altogether.” - James J. Hastings, director of access programs at the National Archives.

We’re happy to see our efforts to digitize and give broader access to historical documents with NARA noted - and illustrated with a good-looking infographic:

First, a quick intro: My name is Josh Buhler. I’m the resident Flash Ninja here at Footnote. My responsibilities cover pretty much anything to do with Flash on the Footnote site, including the document Viewer, which is used to view and annotate the documents on our site.

Working on the Viewer is a lot of fun. It has been one of the highlights of my Flash development career. Hearing all the good things folks  are able to do with it, just makes my day more rewarding. We’ve got some big plans for the Viewer but have also heard your many suggestions.

This latest update addresses a few bugs as well as adds some new features that I’d like to highlight:

Annotations

You can now edit your annotations! To edit simply find your annotation on the document and click “Edit”…

make your changes…

and Save.

Annotations are also a little easier to use now. Previously, if you wanted to annotate something at the very top of a document, the annotation window would become hidden. That’s fixed.

Filmstrip

The Filmstrip - at the bottom portion of the Viewer - displays other documents from the same Title as the one being viewed.

When scrolling through lots of images, the Filmstrip would begin to slow down depending on how many images were available.

Now, the Filmstrip can easily support several hundred images.

The speed and smoothness of the Filmstrip will depend on the speed of your computer, but, on my MacBook Pro, I was easily scrolling through over 1000 images in the Filmstrip.

There’s another big update I’m excited about:

Next time you’re in the Viewer, click on a couple of images in the Filmstrip and watch the URL of the site up in the address bar of your browser.

You’ll notice the URL automatically changes to reflect the image that you’re viewing. What this means is that you can now easily bookmark documents and send links to your friends.

Get Help

We’ve added some help content to the viewer. Just click the Help  button (marked as “?”) in the toolbar for some guidance.

Find the Easter Egg

Lastly, I’ve added a little treat for you to find.

The Viewer now has an easter egg lurking somewhere inside it, and it’s up to you to find it.

For those not familar with the term, easter eggs in software (and now our site), are hidden surprises that require a bit of sleuthing to find.

Let us know if you find it, but don’t give away how you did it.

That’ll ruin the fun of finding it for the others.

Good luck, and happy hunting!

(Now, if you would like a hint, I’d suggest starting in Project Blue Book - you’ll find that there’s some great stuff in there - you just have to search for it.)