Civil War News
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mid-October 2019. The NARA staff, assisted through efforts of their Citizen Archivist Mission, continue to add digital files. One tip, users should set up a free NARA account before conducting a tremendous amount of research. After establishing the account, researchers can save results to their lists, share findings with others, and more! One last example. In selecting the ‘Images’ tab, one sees 35 digitized files on Longstreet. Some of these represent photographs of the man, others include documents and scanned pages from various books (or this example from ‘Letters and Telegrams Sent, Gen. James Longstreet’s Command, October 1863 - March 1865’). Researchers can access the ‘Record Group Explorer’ at https://www.archives.gov/findingaid/explorer, and download any of the digitized-files. This new OCR search feature currently applies only to those records added since June 1, 2019. However,
Searching the National Archives Online Recently, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) introduced the ability to conduct Optical Character Recognition (OCR) searches on their new portal into the various Record Groups in their collection. Aptly named the ‘Record Group Explorer’ (see screenshot above), the graphical user interface makes navigation much more manageable. For those who prefer standard list searches, one can change to this interface with a simple click. Regardless of the platform used, conducting OCR searches among the almost 87 million digitized records nets accurate results in a quick fashion! The following simple experiment should assist readers in understanding how to navigate and obtain the best search results. Most folks have grown familiar with the typical technique of placing search terms in quotation marks, especially when researching a specific name or phrase. For example, a search of “James Longstreet” produced 112 records (for those interested in speed, the search took .32 seconds). The image below shows
December 2019
the initial search results page. Users can hover their mouse over the various headers at the top of the page to obtain a quick review of the types of digitized-material available. One can see the 112 results (and the speed) on the first row. Beneath this information, one finds the following: ‘Available Online,’ ‘Web
the NARA staff continues to explore various methods of utilizing OCR technology, retroactively, to eventually include all their holdings. Next month, we will take a look at resources, which will assist in using the various Record Groups at the National Archives. Coupled with the new OCR search capability, hopefully, researchers can more quickly locate topics under study. Until then, good luck in researching the Civil War! Michael K. Shaffer is a Civil War historian, author, lecturer, instructor, and a member of the Society of Civil War Historians, the Historians of the Civil War Western Theater, the Georgia Association of Historians, and the Georgia Writers Association. Readers may contact him at mkscdr11@ gmail.com, or to request speaking engagements, via his website www.civilwarhistorian.net. Follow Michael on Facebook www.facebook.com/michael.k.shaffer and Twitter @michaelkshaffer.
Pages,’ ‘Documents,’ ‘Images,’ and ‘Videos.’ The popup window shows 79 hits under the ‘Available Online’ header, indicating the current number of digitized Longstreet holdings as of
Longstreet Letters and Telegrams Sent.
(National Archives 26282871)