And when you do come to the Archives, unless you bring your own laptop, and scanner or digital camera, it is going to cost you to make copies of the documents. So everyone is paying in some way.

I understand what you are trying to say, and if you are fortunate enough to live close enough to NARA, and have retired and have a lot of time on your hands, to spend hours, days, months, years, looking through boxes of non-indexed records, you have more than the rest of the world has.:)

Footnote may be acceptable to the genealogist, but is not acceptable to scholars and historians. The end results also do nothing to preserve the document in its original format. 300 dpi is a minimal standard for today, but won’t have a very long shelf life.

And I don’t know what you are talking about when you are saying in color, everything I have seen in Footnote is black and white. This is not the original format of the document, and valuable information is lost because the black and white fails to bring out the pencil notations, the colored ink, which does signify specific information.

There is no quality control from NARA’s side, and there are so many mistakes and poor quality in the projects that within five years time when they get copies of the images, they will go along the wayside, just like all of the other projects that NARA starts but fails to finish.

Another thing you should worry about is that although NARA claims that these are non-exclusionary contracts, and that you can visit the facility in Washington, D.C. to see the original documents, NARA has every intention of removing these originals from public access, sending users instead to Footnote to look at poor quality copies.

I wonder why the Footnote.com scans are being referred to as “low quality.” I have not done extensive research at Footnote.com, but have browsed around a fair bit and everything I have seen was sharp and clear and easy to read (at least if the handwriting was good). I was also impressed by the interface at Footnote–the ability to zoom in and out of documents, to fiddle with the color balance, etc. to make things more readable.

Above all I love the crowd sourcing features. Users highlight and annotate documents and the annotations become part of the searchable database. It is similar to the Flickr/LOC partnership but without the noise.

I can understand a preference that NARA do this on their own dime rather than farming it out–I would prefer that as well–but the Footnote end of the partnership looks pretty good. What am I missing?

The staff on the research side are frustrated because they feel that the Foundation is calling all of the shots.

And I agree, no other Archives in the world would even consider replacing valuable research real estate with a gift shop that is only going to be of any significance 3 months out of the year.

It is one thing to create a Foundation that is going to provide the means to do exhibits, etc., but when they overstep their position and begin getting in the way of the mission, there needs to be someone there to put the brakes on things. And at this point in time, there isn’t.

Right now, as far as pull times go, the first pull request goes in at 10 a.m. It may be two hours before you get your first request. They will only accept one pull per hour. Maximum of two carts, and one shelf pull. At Archives II, I have seen many out of state, and out of country researchers come in, put their request in, and two or three hours later they receive a wrong pull, many times to the fault of the students pulling the records, or an archivist who does not know the records, and the researcher is simply told to submit another pull request, which forces him to wait another two hours. His day is gone, and nothing has been accomplished. There is no apology from the staff. They simply do not understand that many of the researchers are on time constraints. It is fully understood why scholars have no desire to spend much time at the Archives.