The Bottom Line
- One of the best image viewers I've seen for accessing images online
- Offers access to millions of historic documents previously unavailable online
- The ability to annotate and/or add comments to any individual document page
- 7-day free trial available
- Requires the lastest version of Flash. In some cases, the site won't even load without it.
- No soundex search. Some advanced search features are available, but not obvious.
- No FAQ or easy answers to support questions such as the Flash issue.
- Many document series are still "in progress"
Description
- Over 5 million images of historical American documents and photos from the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
- Records include: Revolutionary & Civil War pension & service records, state naturalization records and case files of the FBI.
- Annotate, comment, print and save digital document images.
- Story pages allow you to create a simple Web page with point and click editing.
- Upload and post your own historical documents for free.
- Under the nonexclusive agreement, Footnote's images will be available on the National Archives' Web site after five years.
Guide Review - Footnote.com
If you have a problem with the site loading slowly or hanging your browser, be sure you have downloaded the latest version of Flash player for your browser. This appears to fix many such problems.
Simple search is just that - simple. You enter search terms and then choose whether to search across all documents, or within a specific document set, such as PA Western Naturalizations. There is presently no soundex search, but you can narrow the search by document type, such as across all naturalization records, or within a particular title (first browse to the document subset you wish to search, and then enter your search terms). Advanced search hints can be accessed by clicking on the ? next to search.
Footnote.com has the framework in place to be one of the most flexible and user-friendly sites on the Web for American genealogists. Once they add more records (and there are many in the works), upgrade the search feature, and do some tweaking, it has the potential to be a 5 star site. Despite being a newcomer to the world of digitized historic documents, Footnote has definitely risen the bar.
