With a lot of help from the great folks at Family Tree Magazine, we are pleased to introduce the first ever Footnote Webinar.

This free 30-minute introduction to using Footnote covers:

• Records you’ll find on Footnote
• Searching Footnote
• Using the Footnote viewer
• Creating Footnote Pages

We do our best to make Footnote easy to use (and we’d appreciate any feedback that can help us get there), but there’s so much you can do on the site that a tutorial like this is a great way to get going.

Have a look at the webinar and the Getting the most out of Footnote page and let us know what you think in a comment here or through the Contact Footnote page.

Today as I was looking around Footnote, I came across some images, uploaded by UCHS1960, that are wonderful examples of the power of photographs.  Nothing points out the similarities and differences between the past and the present the way a photo can.

UCHS1960 has uploaded so many great images it’s hard to choose just a few, but here are some that I particularly liked:

After the 1908 Flood

The Circus Comes To Town

Early Taxi Service

Broadway Gets Cement – 1914

The 1928 Union High Football Team

It’s amazing what a plane can go through and still keep flying.

This morning I was looking through some photos on the site and came into a section of photos taken in England of planes that had been damaged on missions, but still returned to base.

Here are a couple of examples:

Then I came across this one:

I did a little research and found a Missing Air Crew Report for this plane (one member of the crew was killed) and then found Footnote Pages, created from the Social Security Death Index, for the pilot, Lawrence DeLancey and the navigator, Ray Ledoux. I added a few web links and some stories about this amazing event to their pages.

Here’s the first image in the section of battle damaged planes in England. You can browse through the collection using the filmstrip at the bottom to look at other images.

You can view all the World War II Airforce images for free.

Do you often wish you could insert a thread through the documents and images on Footnote that relate to the same person, place, event or topic?   You can!  Just create a connection between them.

Connections

When you find images that you’d like to connect, simply click on the Connection link above the image.   Then click on the next image from you gallery or from Footnote.  Choose a Connection Type from the drop down list and add Details about why they are related.  The text you enter for the Details describes the connection so everyone understands the linkage.

Moving Connection Order

If you want to move the images from side to side, click on the flip icon above the Connection Type.

Sequential Order or Relational Order

You may want to link the images in chronological order or in relation to surrounding events, places, etc.

How many images can you link together in a string?  There really isn’t a limit although excessively large groups may be more difficult to review than more targeted groupings.  However, you understand the story or concept that you are showing and hence are the best judge of how the connection groupings are best presented.

Viewing Other Connections

Great!  You’ve made a connection or have found a connected image in your search.   How can you see the other images that have been connected to it?

Click on the image so it shows in the Image Viewer. If the image has connections, there will be a number above the Connections link.    Click on the number and choose the ‘View Connections” link.  The other connected images will then be displayed.

An alternative to searching for an image by title or subject and watching for the connection indicator is to click on ‘Member Discoveries’ at the top of the home page, then on the down arrow and choosing “Connections” from the drop down list.

The list of member connections is shown in chronological order

Choose a connection from the list and click on it.

The results will look like the connection below.  Note that links below the images tell how many other connections exist to that image.  Click on the links and all of the associated connections will be listed.

If you’ve discovered or know of connections that will benefit yourself or others, take a few minutes to ‘make the connection’ just like member “grandmaginny222′ did here.  Everyone wins when you do.

The original images on Footnote are incredible.  Everyone agrees on that.   Every time you think you’ve finished a high-level review of the contents in the categories on Footnote, another two million images are added.

While we all revel in the original documents on Footnote, not as many of us researchers take advantage of the documents and photos uploaded by other members.  We see some of them when they briefly show up as a Spotlight, but there are hundreds of thousands that are uploaded and but are never spotlighted by members.

You owe it to yourself to search for items of interest in the member submitted category.  The image topics there are as varied as the interests of Footnote members.

To look for Member Submissions, just click on the down arrow on the Search button and choose ‘Advanced search’.

In the Advanced search window, enter the information you seek in any combination… full name, surname, place, year range a keyword or all of the above.Near the bottom of the window, choose “Member Contributed Images” from the drop-down list to limit your search specifically to that category.

The results of your search may be a rare family photo like this photo of the Kornhauser family posted by member leokeil.

You may find a great letter like this one that was posted by member markgilchrist.

It could be the French birth certificate of Hubert Dominic Cardini that was posted by member RCardini.

Member contributions are an excellent way for individuals with common interests to share their ‘finds’ with each other and the Footnote community.

All of us who post to Footnote need to remember to name our images with intelligent names so they can be found in a search.  We also need to annotate the key items in them to enhance the content descriptions so they are included in search results.

What treasures lie undiscovered by others in your Footnote shoebox?  Share them by making sure enough information is included in the title and annotations so others can find them when they search Footnote.

Last night we added a new feature to the site that will help you get more from Footnote without doing more work.

When you find something on the site that you are interested in, look for a  button and click it.  The item will be added to your “Watch List” in Your Account and we’ll send  you an email whenever that item is updated.

Watching Searches and Titles
Each month we add millions of new images to the site and Footnote Members upload images and annotate thousands of names, dates and places on images they find on the site.

Now you can use Watches to know when something you’ve been looking for has arrived at Footnote.

To set up a Search Watch:
Search for something, for example, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Click the Watch button on the Search results page, we’ll add a Watch with your search terms and let you know when a new match is appears on the site.

If there’s a Title that you are interested in, find it on the Original Documents page, click in the name of the title and you’ll go to a page with information about and a Watch button for that title.  Add a Watch and we’ll notify you when new images are added or when someone adds an annotation, comment or other contribution to an image in that title.

Watching Images, Story Pages and Spotlights
You can add a Watch for any image, Story Page or Spotlight and we’ll let you know when they are updated, annotated, commented on, etc.  It might give you the opportunity to learn something surprising or meet someone who shares your research interests.

Watching Members
If you find a Footnote Member who is doing interesting things, you can add a Watch from their Profile page and be notified when they add something new.

Watching Your Own Contributions
By default, we’ll add a Watch to images, Story Pages or Spotlights you add to Footnote.

If you’ve added things in the past and would like to watch them, visit this page and click the button.

Managing Watches
You’ll find your Watch List in Your Account.  There you can see everything you are watching and remove a Watch if you are no longer interested in it.  You can choose how often you’d like to receive your email notifications on the right side of the Watch List page.

Hi! I’m Donna and I’ve worked at Footnote for over a year. Part of what I do is write Story Pages and other miscellany. Here is my Footnote profile.

I found this interesting recommendation when I was annotating in the Confederate Amnesty Papers. The Governor of Tennessee wrote, in behalf of John Russell’s application for amnesty, that he was an old man and a bad rebel. He continued that Russell “had been badly whipped and has not long to live.” You can see the entire case free here.

Two weeks ago, I gave a keynote presentation titled “We Media: How Audiences Are Changing The Future of News and Information” (PDF) at the Fall Meeting of the Association of Information and Dissemination Centers in Arlington, Virgina.

The ASIDIC meeting attracted folks from organizations like ProQuest, Newsbank, Thompson, Hewlett-Packard, NARA and the Smithsonian together to talk about digital content strategies.

If my talk added anything to the conversation, it was this: Whatever your strategy, make sure that Social Media (user contributions, ratings, networks) is a central part of it.

People were clearly open to the message. But just telling people what they already know or want to hear is not actionable. So, I put together a few rules for guiding their innovation.

Why some sites like Facebook experience a meteoric rise and many others never make it off the launch pad is a mystery. But it seems clear that those who are successful have at least these 7 things in common:

1. They start with a compelling idea & simple solution.
2. They let people make their stuff better, more findable or entertaining.
3. They live by the Golden Rule – be nice to others.
4. They encourage lots of feedback.
5. They create “usable exhaust” – new things are created just by people doing stuff they want to do.
6. They let many groups form easily and quickly.
7. They recognize and encourage the good people in the network.

This list will no doubt change over the coming months as more of you help us figure out how to create a better place for you to find, share, relate and discuss your stories.

Update: Social Media Web sites are the future of the media business via CNet.

There is no master plan of History.

Events happen, we witness and, later, we try to make sense of them.

When tragic or momentous events do occur, we often seek to forgo patience for prescience. We want it all to make sense now. We want order and meaning restored.

In an age when reporting has mostly given way to analysis, a look back into history suggests that observations and facts are far more valuable since true perspective can only come with time.

As an example, I came across this letter written by Thomas Jefferson 218 years ago today:

It is vivid and striking not only because of its rich details but in its lack of any superfluous prognostication or color commentary. It’s just the facts written by a shaken but brilliantly coherent observer.

The letter describes an angry mob storming a prison, taking up arms, freeing captives and beheading authorities.

Jefferson, for all of his intellect, cannot see beyond that moment. So he writes for it. It’s what a good reporter would do.

He stands amid the chaos watching the instant one of the world’s most powerful countries begins to furiously unravel at the seams.

He witnesses the genesis of something before its consequences can be known, or before the master plan can be seen – even before it has a name: The French Revolution.

Cross-posted at Hypergene Media Blog

The National Archives unveiled a handwritten note by Abraham Lincoln written on 7 July 1863 telling his generals to bring about “the litteral(sic) or substantial destruction of (Robert E.) Lee’s army” after the battle of Gettysburg. A week after Lincoln’s note, the Confederate army slipped across the Potomac River into Virginia, and the war continued for two more years. This document underscores one of the great missed opportunities for an early end to the Civil War.