Friday, June 29, 2007

"Official" Launch and Free Documents

Footnote.com announced it's "official" launch yesterday. While the site has been live since January and over 12.5 million images/documents are now available on the site, yesterday was the "hard" launch. (January would have been referred to as the "soft" launch). As far as I understand it, the difference is more a marketing difference than anything else.

So, to me, the most significant part of the release is the following:

As part of the launch, Footnote.com is making a significant portion of their millions of original Revolutionary War documents available for free from today until the end of July [my emphasis]. Included in these records are secret journals, intercepted letters from the British military, and letters written by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and other founding fathers. Click here (http://www.footnote.com/revolutionary-war.php) to see samples of these Revolutionary War documents.
This promotion doesn't include the so-called "big" titles like the Revolutionary War Pensions or War Rolls, but includes:
Like the press release mentions, this includes things like Secret Journals, Secret Foreign Journals, Reports of the Army, Letters of Commendation, and the Credentials of the Delegates to the Constitutional Convention.

Full Press Release:
Footnote.com Announces Official Launch of the Company and Reveals First-Hand Accounts of the Birth of America

2 comments:

Jason Presley said...

Is there any chance you folks could shoot a short video tour of Footnote showing how the process works, from microfilm to website? Y'know, with folks in hardhats and noise-cancelling earphones walking around the cavernous Footnote microfilm scanning plant among all the giant machinery and happy dedicated workers so we can see just how much work it is.

Mike Clement said...

That's an interesting idea. I'll pass it on to the marketing guys :)