gale’s premier platform for 20th century studies: declassified documents reference system

Gale’s Premier Platform for 20th Century Studies:

Declassified Documents Reference System

Declassified Documents Reference System (DDRS)

95,000+ documents from 1941 forward

Includes mainly documents in presidential libraries declassified by FOIA

Documents declassified by Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests

450K pages scanned from the microfiche edition (also available from PSM)

Searchable fulltext keyed in by hand (we’re changing this to OCR)

Bibliographical information and abstracts added by PSM

All documents can be searched fulltext

The below are NOT included:

Documents automatically declassified according to 30-year/25-year rule

Published documents that are widely available

The “Retrospective Collection: pre-1975” (1,020 fiche) of the microfiche edition

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Administrative

Departments

Presidential

Libraries

Citizens/Researchers

Online ed.

FOIA request

Scanning/

Run OCR

Microfiche ed.

Indexing/Abstracting

Transfer docs to

libraries

SECRET

Document

declassified and

provided in copy

SECRETDeclassified

Provide microform

DDRS: How Documents are Included

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DDRS: Functionalities

Available Search Indexes:

Keyword/Subject

Full Text

Title/Abstract

Source Institution

Issue Date

Date Declassified

Document Type

Source Institution

Classification Level

Sanitization

Completeness

Number of Pages

Sorting Options:

Relevancy

Date Issued

Saving/Marking Documents

Mark documents

Permanent URL s

Print PDF

DDRS: Source Institutions

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Finally!! - Additional ContentFinally!! - Additional Content

• Total Pages Currently Online: 595,000 (= 95,000 individual documents)

• Last content update: 2007!

• Lag in content updating has been awaited by customers

Newly Digitized and Loading:

• 173,000 pages

• 21,600 documents• We are continually

acquiring new content, so we can be prepared for future loads

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Recently Acquired New Content Addresses the customer issue:Recently Acquired New Content Addresses the customer issue:“More documents, now!“More documents, now!””

We are adding documents released to the DDRS microfiche publication between 2007 and 2012

Includes documents from:

– Presidential libraries

– Executive Departments

– National Security Council

– Joint Chiefs of Staff

– FBI

– Department of Defense

– Many other source libraries

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What is being done….Previously, DDRS included keyed text (not OCR text) along with the document images.

Today, we are now moving to an OCR model and away from a time-restrictive and costly keyed-text model.

TWO DELIVERABLES:

1. Abundant Content Load

2. Turn off button in product (see illustration) so the “view text” option is no longer available to end-users after the content load is completed

We will turn-off

this button

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View recently-released documents on a variety of topics

The new DDRS content includes all 20 FBI

“interviews” of Saddam Hussein, along with

documents on the search for Saddam’s

weapons of mass destruction

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View recently-released documents on a variety of topics

Documents on the Global War on Terrorism

extend from the 1970s to the 21st century,

culled from a variety of agencies.

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More recently-released documents…The addition of new content provides

historical documents on the evolution of the

Brown Berets and the militant Chicano

movement, as well as other militant groups in

the 1960s and 1970s.

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More recently-released documents…

“…His brain has not

only been washed,

as they say... It has

been dry cleaned…“

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More recently-released documents…

There are newly-released

documents that provide unique

revelations on the conduct of the

Vietnam War.

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More recently-released documents…

Declassified documents highlight the

extent of Hoover’s paranoia with the

Communist infiltration of the motion

picture industry.

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QUESTIONS?

THANK YOU