Saturday, September 15, 2007

Product Review: Footnote.com

I've been a Footnote.com subscriber for awhile now, but hadn't really spent a lot of time with it until recently. When I first started with it, it seemed to have a lot of fairly obscure documents, such as the city council minutes of South Boston, Virginia. Frankly, what brought me back to explore it again was a series of interesting posts by Miriam Midkiff at Ancestories in which the stories she told were tied to documents on Footnote.com.

Now I'm quite a bit more impressed. Partnerships with the National Archives and FamilySearch have brought a number of interesting documents and photographs to Footnote.com. The American Milestone Documents collection, for example, is just what the name suggests: important documents in American history. And there are a number of military records.

I like the fact that for each finite set of documents, Footnote indicates what percentage of the set is currently available.

More purely genealogical documents are available now. In the 16% complete Texas Death Certificates collection, I found two death certificates that I'd been unable to find elsewhere for several years. One of these I had thought did not exist.

Navigation could use some improvement, but otherwise, the technical aspects of the site are in the "superior" category.

I'm visiting Footnote.com often just to browse the interesting documents.

Recommendation: A "must visit."

4 comments:

Janice said...

Craig,

I agree. Footnote is the best thing since sliced bread :D

Janice

Miriam Robbins said...

I'm glad that my series inspired you, Craig! It was mere coincidence that Footnote posted the records of the American North Russian Expeditionary Forces shortly after I began my series of my great-grandfather's service in the ANREF near the close of WWI. But oh, what a terrific coincidence it has been!

Anonymous said...

I agree with your assessment of Footnote.com. I joined and was not let down. The quality of the images of the source documents were really good. Access to the Southern Claims images alone was worth the amount of subscription for me. Seems they're on the right track and I suspect the historical and genealogical research communities will be hearing more about this company as time goes on.

Bob

Bill West said...

I agree with you as well,Craig.

Footnote.com is the only paid
paid site I subscribe to and I've
found a bunch of information on
a half dozen ancestors already.