How to Use the Archive
The History Matters Archive is vast, and can be a bit daunting at first.
This and other help pages can help you get started. This page describes
general features of the Archive and ways in which it can be used:
Ways of Accessing
the Archive
Browsing the Archive
Viewing Documents
Viewing PDF Documents
Listening to Audio
Help is Available
Ways of Accessing the Archive
Browse - You can browse the contents of the Archive "by agency"
(documents and other holdings are classified by the agency which released
the document, which is not always the same as the agency which created
it). Click on browse by agency in the brown sidebar to the left
to get started. You can then follow links down and back up the hierarchy
of collections, and click links to view document pages, listen to audio,
or view photographs.
Use "list of holdings" shortcut - A lengthy listing
of the collections in the Archive is available via the list of holdings
link in the brown sidebar to the left. This can be faster than browsing
if you know what you're looking for (and where it is).
Follow links from essays - The essays on this site are rich in
links to source materials present in the Archive. When you click on such
a link in an essay, your browser view is transported to that page of the
Archive. To get back to the essay, use your browser's Back button (you
may have to hit it several times if you have browsed a few pages).
Browsing the Archive
If you click on the browse by agency link the brown sidebar on
the left, you are taken to the Archive's "top-level" table of
contents page. This page lists various agencies and investigative bodies:
Warren Commission, House Select Committee on Assassinations, CIA, etc.
Click on any of these to go to a page which is the top-level page for
that agency. On any page but the "root" page of the Archive,
note that there are return to links which can be used to
return back up the hierarchy to the root contents page. Not only is there
a link to the "parent" contents page, but there are links to
each level back up to the root. Thus you can easily jump back up to any
level.
At some point, you will reach a level where the contents page contains
not links to further contents pages, but rather links to documents, audio
clips, and photographs. These "leaf" contents pages (using the
tree analogy) feature pale yellow and white stripes in their listings.
Also, many of the entries feature a red-and-white PDF icon the right of
the link, which can be used to view an alternate form of the document.
Clicking on a link on a "leaf" page takes you to a page which
features a scanned page image, along with various links to change pages,
return to the contents page, view a printable version of the page, and
so on. Use the Prev and Next links to advance forward and back through
the pages, or use the numbered page links to jump around more freely.
The next section describes this in more detail.
Viewing Documents
Each document available in the History Matters Archive is available in
two formats. The default format, accessed by clicking on the links in
the Archive's contents pages, is individual scanned page images. These
present a single GIF or JPEG image of a page, along with navigation elements
surrounding the page. The navigation elements include the standard title
bar and tabs at the top of the screen, for navigating to any place on
this web site. Below these are the following elements in a yellow border
area above the scanned page:
- First row: Document title on left, page number on right.
- Second row: Links to nearby pages on left, links to previous
and next pages on right.
- Third row: Return link back to contents page
Use the page number or previous/next links to access different pages
of the same documents. When you are done viewing the pages of any document,
using the return to link to go back to the contents page.
From there, you may view other documents, move back up to any level in
the document hierarchy, or use the tabs in the brown sidebar or atop the
window to move to another area of the site.
One other feature of the scanned-page images is an addition to the blue
row of tabs near the top of the window. Clicking on the printable page
link there takes you to a page which features just the scanned page image,
with no navigation buttons or other frills around it. You can then use
your browser's print function to print that page. To print multiple pages
at once, you must view multi-page PDF documents (see below).
The second form in which each document is available is Adobe Portable
Document Format (PDF). These can be accessed wherever the PDF icon appears .
The next section describes how to view PDF documents.
Viewing PDF Documents
Virtually all documents in the History Matters Archive are available
in two forms: as individual scanned page images, and as Adobe Portable
Document Format (PDF) multi-page documents. The section above described
browsing the Archive and viewing scanned page images. This section provides
introductory material about the other format, PDF documents.
Adobe PDF documents feature higher-resolution page images, searchable
text, and useful viewing controls. They are viewed using the freely available
Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is very likely already present on your computer.
PDF-based documents thus are higher-quality and offer features not available
via the default scanned-image pages. However, this power comes at a price.
Because the PDF documents are higher-resolution and include multiple pages
per document, they are larger in file size than the individual scanned
pages. Many PDF documents are over a megabyte in size, and some are more
than 5 megabytes. Using a 56K modem, a 1 megabyte PDF file takes about
4 or 5 minutes to download.
The lengthy download time is not quite as bad as it sounds, as the first
few pages of the document are available for viewing while the remainder
of the document is downloaded. PDF documents also may be printed in their
entirety, saved to hard disk, emailed to a friend, etc.
A separate help page, using Adobe Reader,
provides more information on how to use the Adobe viewer to make the most
of PDF-based documents.
Listening to Audio
History Matters features dozens of hours of audio recordings. The include
relevant phone calls of President Lyndon Johnson, witness interviews conducted
by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and recent interviews
conducted by the Assassination Records Review Board. Look for the speaker
icon on a contents page to see if there is audio available  .
If so, clicking on the icon will take you to a page which features a summary
of the audio along with links to listen to the entire segment and often
smaller excerpts from it.
A separate guide called listening to
audio has more information on audio formats and troubleshooting and
problems that may arise in dealing with audio.
Help is Available
See the troubleshooting help
topic if you are having problems that this tutorial hasn't resolved.
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