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:

Last week we made some updates to the site. In addition to fixing bugs and cleaning things up, we added a few new features that we hope will make the site easier to use. Here are some of our favorites:

Image Adjustment
We do all we can to get the best quality images on the site, but sometimes the condition of the source images we have (microfilm, microfiche, paper) leaves us with digital images that are hard to read. In some cases, there isn’t much that can be done, but with most of these images, inverting the image or adjusting the brightness or contrast can bring out details that make all the difference.

Here’s an extreme example of an image that is difficult to read:

Here’s the same image with some adjustment to the brightness and contrast:

Here it is again with the colors inverted and the brightness and contrast adjusted:

These image adjustments aren’t magic and can’t make every image readable, but they can make a big difference if you are having trouble making out a word or some other detail from a document. Invert is particularly handy when the original image is a negative, like this example from the Marine Corps Vietnam photos.

In addition to the image adjustment tools, we’ve improved the “Find” tools for searching text within an image and updated the filmstrip to make it clearer where one document ends and the next begins.

Improved Navigation
One other change worth noting is the update we made to the headers across the site. The new design should make it easier to get around the site, use search and browse, access your account and profile items and remember the last 4 images you viewed (”Your Recent Activity”).

As always, we hope you’ll try these new features and let us know what you think.

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.

After nearly seven months, we’ve hit the 14 million mark and continue to add documents at a pace of more than 2 million a month.

As a comparison: According to Agence France-Presse, the Library of Congress has digitized 11 million documents in 12 years (as of April 2007).

Adobe, the publishers of the Flash Player plugin, have announced that a security update is now available for the Flash Player. Upgrading the Flash Player plugin is not required to continue using Footnote.com or our Document Viewer. However, as this update improves the security of your computer, we do recommend it. This update patches some vulnerabilites that could allow malicious code to take control of your computer.

This update applies to users of Flash Player versions 9.0.45 and earlier. To check which version of the plugin you have installed, visit Adobe’s “About Flash Player” page, and look for the box below:

You will only need to upgrade your Flash Player if the version shown is 9.0.45 or lower, as shown above.

To upgrade your Flash Player, visit the Flash Player Download Center. This page will help you find the appropriate download to upgrade your Flash Player. As a word of warning, updating the Flash Player will require that you quit your web browser while the update is being applied, so be sure to save any Annotations, Story Pages, or anything else you’re working on before beginning the update.

Once the update is complete, you should then have version 9.0.47 or higher installed.

More technical details of this update can be found on Adobe’s site: http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb07-12.html

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.

The following is a list of upcoming Footnote Member Meetings we will be holding the remainder of 2007.

• Salt Lake City, Utah: Friday, July 20, 2007 at 3pm IAJGS 2007 Conference
• Fort Wayne, Indiana: Saturday, August 18, 2007 at 2pm. We will meet in the Grand Wayne Center Board Room 2007 FGS Conference

Footnote members who live in these areas or who will be attending any of these conferences, are welcome to attend. We will discuss future plans, solicit member opinions and give out door prizes. Anyone who is interested may attend. Seating will be limited. If interested please contact Elizabeth.