A new searchable index of hundreds of thousands of documents held by
the Air Force Historical Research Agency has been created by private
researchers and posted online.http://www.airforcehistoryindex.org/
The index does not provide access to the underlying documents, which
must be requested from AFHRA. Nevertheless, it has several interesting
features.For one thing, it represents a step forward in improving accessibility
to declassified government records. The new Air Force index provides a
simple illustration of what can be done to alert the interested public
to the existence of particular records, and suggests how much more
still needs to be done, including providing online access to the
records themselves.Second, the new index represents an unusual, implicit public-private
partnership. Researchers gained access to the Air Force bibliographical
data and installed a search engine on top, then posted it online in the
public interest. The researchers said they preferred to remain
anonymous.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 and is filed under Access to Information, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Open Source Intelligence, Search News.
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