Our genealogical society has been having a monthly computer education class in the computer lab at the downtown library. The January class was on Footnote. What is Footnote? Footnote.com is a website containing images of original documents and photographs combined with social networking. This website allows historians and genealogists to develop a unique environment where they can share and exchange content, stories, family histories, photos and documents of their own.
Six Main Features are:
- Original Documents. Browse on all titles to see the records categorized by time periods, and then by title, volume and date range or case name. You can also search for a name, date place or topic.
Contents of the Original Documents include US Milestone Documents, Revolutionary War pension records, compiled Civil War service records index cards for veterans and their widows, Pennsylvania State Archives, Texas Confederate service records, FBI case files, Texas Birth Certificates, and the one that intrigued me WWII Army Air Corps pictures, just to name a few.
- Annotations. You can add notes (annotations) to images at Footnote. The image may have a hard to read date, you can add a note of what the correct date is, or any other note you want. These will be searchable in the websites search engine. They are also linked to you b. Find the latest news and updates for Footnote: http://blog.footnote.comr profile so other researchers can contact you.
- Spotlights. Spotlights are a way for you to highlight an image so other users can find or discuss the image your found...maybe your ancestor, or an interesting historical document.
- Story Pages. You can write about something of interest to you and add your own photos or download Footnote images. This is a free feature and can be a lot of fun.
- Uploads. You can upload your own images for free to Footnote. This is a great way to preserve and share your own historical documents.
- Gallery. This is your own personal photo album where you can store images you have found or uploaded. You can add titles and descriptions to the images, and you can have mini albums in your gallery to sort the images.
Helpful Links are:
- Take the tour of the site
- Find the latest news and updates for Footnote
There are several types of subscriptions. I was somewhat interested in that you can wander through most of the paid areas and view snapshots of images with descriptions of the image and if you find one you like you can purchase that image for $1.95. A monthly subscription is $7.95; annual subscriptions are $59.95. Even on dialup the images loaded quickly, so do not think you cannot wander around Footnote without a high-speed connection.
As I was writing this article, Dick Eastman had an article on his February 14, 2008
blog about Footnote. He was saying Footnote is adding more original documents all the time and they have just passed the one million mark for free original documents. He then gave this list of some of the free documents:
- Japanese Air Targets Analyses (WWII)
- Gorrell's History of AEF Air Service (WWI)
- Hesse Crown Jewels Court Martial Case - a $2.5 million heist by American officers in 1945
- Naval Press Clippings
- Brady Civil War Photographs
- WWII - Japanese Photographs
- Fine Arts Commission Photographs
- Harry S Truman Photographs
- Franklin D. Roosevelt Photographs
- Dwight D. Eisenhower Photographs
- Calvin Coolidge Photographs
- George A. Custer s Court Martial
- Foreign Letters of the Continental Congress
- Ratified Amendments to the US Constitution
- Amsted Court Records
- American Colonization Society
- VA Town Records - City of South Boston (that is not a misprint, there is a city named "South Boston" in the Commonwealth of Virginia)
- Domestic Letters of the Department of State
Since Footnote has so many original documents online and keeps adding more all the time, a website néeds to be checked regularly. I was interested in the WWII Army Air Corps pictures, but you should be able to find some original documents in which you are interested.
