We recently switched to our new search experience. 

The new search is useful because it provides an effortless way to narrow your results.

It does this by using an approach commonly referred to as “guided” or “faceted” navigation specifically tailored to your search results.

What does that mean for you? It means that clicking on any facet, like a Title or Collection, will always give you results. Many might think this is an easy feature to implement, but it is not. It requires a lot of smart software, better metadata and lots of computing power.  But instead of reading more about it, why not check out this 4-minute introduction:

We added some updates to the site last week. You may have noticed these, but if not, here are some things to look for:

In the viewer:
Full Screen Viewing: Now you can take advantage of the full size of your monitor when you are reviewing images on the site. Just click the “Full Screen” button in the tool bar of the viewer. Since you can’t enter text while in full screen view (this is a security feature of the Flash player) you can’t annotate, or add other things to the image in full screen, but you’ll get a great view of the document.

We’ve also added the ability to select a specific part of an image to save or print so that you can get just the parts you want.

In search:
On the search results page you’ll find a “report an error” link below the information about each image. When you come across a mistake in the indexing, just click the link, tell us where the error is and what it should be and we’ll see what we can do to get it fixed.

We’re still working on our new search and we really appreciate the feedback we’ve received so far. We just added categories to the Advanced Search page, and we’ll soon add the ability to search within a date range.

For Connections and Story Pages:
We removed a few steps from the process of uploading an image to add it to a Story Page or connect it to another image you find.

We hope that these changes and others we are working on will make Footnote a better place to find, use and share the images and stories that are important to you. Please let us know if there are things you’d like to see on the site.

We’re pleased to report that we rolled some more updates to the site this morning. We hope they will make your time on Footnote more pleasant and productive.

Updates to the site include:

• A completely revamped viewer
• More improvements to Your Gallery
• One small step in our progress toward a new search

The Viewer
The big change with this update is an overhaul of how the viewer works. We’ll post more detailed information soon, but the short version is that the viewer is now faster, smoother and can support much larger images.

In addition to the behind-the-scenes changes, we’ve added:

• the ability to connect images in the viewer and to see connections other users have made.
• the ability to share images you find. If you are an All-Access Member, you can share premium images and the folks you share with can see them for free.
• a find feature for images that have been indexed using optical character recognition (OCR).
• an option to save an image straight to a collection in Your Gallery.

The Gallery
You can now rearrange the images you add or upload to Your Gallery. To do this, simply click the “arrange” button and then drag and drop the images into the order you’d like. After you’ve arranged Your Gallery, you can always find recent additions to Your Gallery by sorting your images by the date you added them to Your Gallery and then return to “Your Arrangement” using the drop-down menu.

Search
We’re working hard to make searching Footnote easier. The first step, the one we took with this update, is to get the current search working on our new platform. You won’t notice too many changes just yet, but we have changed the default search to AND, so the search will now return results that include all the words you search. You’ll find updated search tips here.

There’s much more to come for search, but this first step will make it possible for us to get moving on the larger things we have in mind.

As always, we hope you’ll send us your comments and suggestions. If you’ll let us know what you want the site to do, we’ll do our best to make it work for you.

Last week we revamped the upload feature of the site with changes designed to make it easier for you to upload images from your computer to Footnote and use them on the site.

The three biggest improvements in the new upload process are:

1. You can upload more files more easily.
2. You get more feedback about how the upload is proceeding.
3. You can choose to put your images in a Collection within Your Gallery during the upload process.

A Few Notes about Uploading

• It’s free. You can add images to the site with a free Basic Membership.
• You can upload as many images as you like.
• Other Footnote visitors can see your images for free.
• You can use Footnote’s tools to enhance, explain and share your images.

How It Works
To begin uploading, go to Your Gallery and click the “Upload Images” button.

(Note: You can get to Your Gallery by clicking the “Gallery” link in the upper right area of the site when you are signed in to your free Basic Member account. If you don’t have a free account yet, you can create one here.)

Then:

1. Click the “Choose Images…” button.
2. Select one or more images from your computer. You can select multiple images by clicking on them individually while holding down the “CTRL” key (Mac: “Commad/Apple”), or by holding down the “Shift” key while you click the first and last file in a list you want to upload.
3. Choose whether you want to upload your images to Your Gallery or to a specific Collection.
4. Click the “Upload Images” button.

While your files are being uploaded, you’ll see a progress bar for each image and an estimate of how long it will take to upload that file. Hopefully this will help you know if you should hang around and wait while the images upload or, if you have a slow connection and you’re uploading lots of files, go get something for dinner while we work on the upload.

As with the other new features on the site, we hope you’ll give the new upload process a try and send us your feedback and suggestions.

We launched some new and updated features this morning that we wanted to let you know about.

Keep in mind that most of these are just the first step toward things that we’re working on. We hope you’ll use them in these early stages and send us your feedback so we can include your suggestions as we work on future versions.

The main additions with this update are:

• New tools for organizing Your Gallery
• An overhaul of the upload process
• New tools for connecting images and explaining their relationships
• The ability to link to or embed Spotlights on your own web page
• An update to our Terms of Use, clarifying some issues about copyright and use of the site by minors
• A new tour page that explains what you can do on Footnote

The new tour page explains many of the other features we’ve added, so I’ll talk about that one here and we’ll cover the others in more detail in future posts.

Take a Tour
You can get to the new tour page by clicking the “Take a Tour” button at the top of the home page.

When you get there, you’ll find a list of things you can do on Footnote running down the left side of the page. Click on any of the items in the left column and you’ll see details about that activity in the right-hand pane.

We plan to add video examples and an updated introduction to Footnote to this page in the near future. We hope the tour will provide the information you need to make the most of your time on Footnote.

Have a look at the tour page and let us know what we can do to make it more useful for you.

Last week we added some new features to the site that should make using Footnote easier and more fun.

We added Spotlights and Title Information Pages and overhauled the Original Documents and Profile pages. Here’s a little more detail about the changes:

Spotlights
Spotlights are an easy way to call attention to something interesting that you find or upload to Footnote.

1. While viewing an image, click the “Spotlight This” button.
2. If you only want to spotlight a portion of the image, click on the arrow to the right of “Spotlight This” and choose “Select a Portion of Image.”
3. Click “Continue.”
4. Enter a title for your Spotlight and, if you like, a short description of what you found or why you think it’s interesting.
5. Click “Create Your Spotlight.”

We’ll create a page so that other Footnote users can enjoy and comment on what you found.
Here are some examples of Spotlights that already have been created:

• Anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight
• Bureau of Investigation case file on Frank Lloyd Wright
• Page from a high school yearbook
• Naturalization document for Charles See of See’s Candy

Title Information Pages
Now each title on Footnote has a Title Information page that includes descriptions, free sample images, the number of images from that title currently on Footnote and, where available, the completion status for the title.

Title Information Pages also show how site members have been using documents from the title by listing recent annotations, Spotlights, Story Pages, and comments from images in that title.

Check out the Title Information Page for the American Milestone Documents. You’ll find links to the Title Information Pages in various places around the site, including the Original Documents page.

Updated Original Documents Page
We’ve completely reworked the Original Documents page to provide a clearer picture of what we have on the site and to make it easier to find what you are looking for and how much of it currently is accessible on Footnote.

The new page includes a full listing of all the titles available on Footnote with completion status and short descriptions for each. When you scroll over a title, you’ll find buttons to search or browse, or you can click on the name to go to the Title Information Page.

Another nice feature of the new page is the ability to sort the list by update date. At the upper right of the page you’ll find a pull-down menu that lets you choose to sort the list by “title name” or “new and updated.” If you choose new and updated you can see which titles have just been added or had new images added to them.

The new Original Documents page also includes a counter with the total number of images, including member contributed images, on Footnote. The counter is updated every 10 seconds, so when we are importing new images, you may see it move while you are on the page.

Updated Profiles
The Profile page now gives a more complete view of what a member has done on Footnote, including uploads, annotations, Spotlights, Story Pages and comments added.

We also added an About Me section to the profile so you can give a brief statement about yourself, your research interests or whatever else you would like people to know about you.

You may notice that we’ve increased the display size of the avatar photo on the profile. Some of the older profile images look a little rough in this larger size. If yours looks rough, you can fix it by re-uploading your image.

Here’s the profile for one of our super users, bgill.

We’d love to get your feedback on these changes and to hear anything else you’d like to say about Footnote. If you have a comment, please contact us.

In July 1947, the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) issued a press release saying they had recovered debris of a crashed “flying disc” sparking intense media interest. They later corrected themselves by stating the materials were that of a downed weather balloon.

60 years later, speculation and fascination about the incident continues. Just this week, a peculiar eyewitness report by a retired public relations officer for the base surfaced.

If you’re curious about what people have seen in the sky over the past 60 years, we might have something to keep you busy.

Footnote has free and complete access to more than 129,000 documents of Project Blue Book - investigations conducted by the US Air Force’ from 1947-1969. Note: The original Roswell incident was not covered by this series of investigations. But the reading is fascinating. First-hand accounts from everyone - farmers to fighter pilots.

You can also view more than 1,600 documents that the FBI has released.

Which two people died on the 4th of July?

• Benjamin Franklin Born: 1706
• George Washington Born: 1732
• John Adams Born: 1735
• John Hancock Born: 1737
• Thomas Jefferson Born: 1743
• Abraham Lincoln Born: 1809

Good luck.

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.