Footnote: The Place for

Historical Documents Online

*Chapter One: What is Footnote?*• Footnote allows people to find and share over 70

million historical documents• Use the search engine to explore documents from

organizations like the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and Footnote users themselves

You can also search by looking under different historical eras which are broken down even further into more specific

terms and events

Footnote contains hundreds of different collections that organize documents making it much easier to navigate while

searching for information

Table of Contents

*Chapter One: What is Footnote?

*Chapter Two: How does it work?

*Chapter Three: Why Use Footnote?

*Chapter Four: How can it be used in the classroom?

Allows users to create Footnote Pages to contribute their own information about a person or event…

Includes things like pictures, documents, maps, timelines, relationships, facts, and stories!

*Chapter Two: How Does it Work?*

• Unlike many websites like Footnote, users are able to browse the site and see previews of photos and documents without any fees or memberships.

• In order to get the most out of Footnote, however, a membership is the best way to do that, and there are monthly, annual, and free membership options.

• They also have promotions, like on Black Friday, where they cut the membership price by 50%.

Fortunately, the free membership allows you to preview all images and documents and create your own Footnote pages. You can also access certain documents that are public domain

like the U.S. Constitution.

The all-access membership allows users unlimited access to all of the documents on the website, and also lets you annotate,

comment, print and save images, which can be very useful in research.

One other interesting feature of Footnote is the Interactive Census Project which allows users to search for ancestors based on grandparents’ names; unfortunately this feature requires a

membership to have access to all the information.

Annotate the document

Spotlight important parts of the document

Open a filmstrip, which shows thumbnails of all the pages of the document

Quickly and easily navigate through the pages

Contains many documents that are exclusively available on Footnote.

It is currently amassing the largest collection of historical documents about US history, state histories, town newspapers,

WWI & WWII documents, historical documents and UFO accounts.

Footnote pages are formatted in a way very similar to Facebook, making it very simple to follow and interesting to use.

This interface also allows for a more interactive experience for the user that is more engaging than just textual information.

*Chapter Three: Why Use Footnote?*

• Footnote is an easy to use and a well-developed resource that brings millions of documents together in one location.

• It started with 5 million documents, currently has around 70 million, and adds an average of 2 million each month.

71, 243, 406

*Chapter Four: How can it be used in a class?*

•Footnote is a great resource for research, accessing original documents and photos, and viewing collections covering hundreds of historical eras.

•It can be used to do projects, papers, presentations, or be incorporated into a lesson plan.

•It can be used by the teacher as a resource for a topic or for a trip to the computer lab.

Another project idea using Footnote would be a report on a particular historical person using the Pages feature.

The Pages application includes photos, basic information, timelines, documents, and even personal letters that

provide a unique resource in a report or presentation.

The Interactive Census Project on Footnote can be used to do a Family Tree project. Students just need to know the name of

one grandparent to get their tree started.

By using Footnote, students can do a much more detailed, in depth report of their family history because of the amount of

resources made available to them through documents, photos, and records.

Footnote could also be used to analyze a specific historical era or event, like the Holocaust, by utilizing its collections which contain

thousands of resources in each one.

This may be particularly useful in higher education because of the amount of information available to do longer papers and presentations in a more detailed

manner over a specific topic.