Thursday, August 18, 2011

Footnote.com has a new name - Fold3 - and a new look!

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The press release today from Ancestry.,com proclaimed a new name for Footnote.com - Fold3.  The reason for the name change is to (from the www.Fold3.com site):

"...refocus our efforts on gathering the best online collection of military records and stories we wanted a name that would reflect military history and honor."

What does Fold3 mean?

"Traditionally, the third fold in a flag-folding ceremony honors and remembers veterans for their sacrifice in defending their country and promoting peace in the world."

So what does Fold3 look like?  Pretty much like what Footnote.com looked like yesterday, but with a new name and a little different presentation:

1)  The home page:


The page above looks somewhat different, aside from the name change.  The tabs across the top menu are "Home," "search," "Records," "Memorials" and "Spotlights."

The counter in the right hand column notes:

*  74,820,288 record images
*  99,292,381 memorial pages (the old "Footnote pages")

The "Records" tab has a dropdown list with  "List All Records," "Browse Records," and "Member Discoveries."  The "Memorials" tab has a drop-down list with "Search Memorial Pages,"  "Create a Memorial Page," "Popular Memorial Pages," "Viet Nam Wall," and "USS Arizona Memorial."

2)  At the top of the home page, there is an "About the change" link that leads to the Fold3 HQ Blog titled Footnote is now Fold3:


3) I usually browse specific collections to find historical records on footnote - I've found that I get too many matches when I do a keyword or person search. I clicked on the "Records" tab and "Browse Records" link to see:


I expanded the list above to see if anything was missing. The seven Military Record collections are listed in the left-hand column, and all other records are listed either in the "All Titles" or "Other Records" section. I chose "Other Records" and selected "American Milestone documents".

4)  I then chose "Newspapers" and went looking for "California" and saw the list of newspapers available:


5)  From the "Other Records" list, I chose "City Directories" and drilled down to "City Directories" and chose the District of Columbia, which has directories on Fold3 from 1822 to 1921.


6)  I clicked on the "Memorials" tab on the main menu, and searched for the Footnote Page I created for my second great-grandfather, Isaac Seaver (1823-1901) some time ago:


It looks to me that everything that was on www.Footnote.com is still on www.Fold3.com, which is good.

Why would Ancestry.com change the brand name of a respected and semi-successful historical documents website?  Are more changes coming? 

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