History of the Old and New

First thing I should say is happy Open Access week everyone. I am sure you have discovered in your perusals of the interwebs that this week is set aside for the celebration of free information for all. I recommend you take time to explain to your loved ones the value that open access has in their lives.

In the non-open access side someone posted to the insider about a historical document site called Footnote, I did not immediately investigate but I put it on the back burner to check out later. Then a few minuets later when I was reading a blog Footnote came up yet again. I felt that I must look into it.

Footnote is a semi-free, (read mostly pay) historical document image dataset. There are all sorts of interesting things to explore, News Papers, Texas Death records, Records from WWII, the founding of Liberia and more. Some 50 million images or so the site claims.

The viewer is really nice. The images are clear (better than Google books), the zoom is good and the interface is pretty easy. The ability to annotate images is very interesting but I am not sure how that works; if the annotations are just for you or for everyone. Users can create connections between documents and images that they upload. Did I mention that users can up load images? You can upload images and create pages about people or places or events. Interesting not all of these items are “historic” in the proper term. These are very odd. You can also print copies of the documents. Which I did… There is yet more functionality that I have not had the time to explore. This has the potential to be a very powerful cultural heritage tool.

Now here are my caveats. The free version is highly restrictive. It seems like ever document I tried to query on came up with a premium page notice. This is kind of unfortunate because I really wanted a chance to explore the scope of documentation. Many of the documents come from NARA or the LOC and I understand that what the site is selling is the “service” but still I would like the opportunity to play a bit more before I buy.

Another caveat is provenance. And I guess this is the age old question, how do you trust what you find on-line. I assume that there is some sort of community in place here that cleans the documents and ensures that the information is valid and accurate. Another question I have is how to ensure the contents move into the future.

This site is very interesting to me but I am not quite sure why. There is a mix here of the personal and the historical that you don’t usually see elsewhere. I really find it fascinating, it is an experiment with meaning and historical documentation that does not usually happen.