The NARA 12/15/2022 data dump is now a searchable PDF archive

[Steven Kossor]

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xYm0T9wgtdNLYquaaeYoUfAuFyieyWG_?usp=share_link

This link contains the complete data download from NARA on 12/15/2022 that has been scanned with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software so that the file contents can be searched efficiently.  A program like TreeSize can scan the entire collection of 148,000+ pages in a few minutes.  A search using the word "ambulance" revealed the Fruge account of Rose Cheramie's claims and documentation of the FBI's involvement in casting aspersions on Ralph Abernathy in advance of his planned appearance at a rally for political candidates, for example.  Best wishes to the research community for a happy Holiday season, new year and beyond!

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks for this Steve.

[Tom Gram]

Thanks Steven. Is there any way to do word searches across multiple OCR scanned documents in Google Drive. I feel like it’s supposed to work with the Malcolm Blunt archive for example but all I can get it to do is search for the titles of documents. If I download the files and put them in a folder on my Mac it works fine, which is what I do with the Garrison files, but it’d be a lot more convenient if it was possible to do it all online. I’m just wondering if I’m missing something obvious here or if the only way to get the search function to work is to download everything. 

[Steven Kossor]

I have only used Tree Size to do searches of .pdf document files, so I can't give any advice about using Google Drive or other resources that may do the same thing.  I used Tree Size to help David Lifton recover documents from his ailing Mac Book Pro computer a couple of years ago and was amazed at how efficient it was.  With that program, you can identify every document in a folder (or anywhere on a computer) that contains a target word or phrase, and click on the link it produces to open that exact page in Acrobat.  I think Tree Size is one of the most useful utilities I've ever found.  There is a free version but the cost of the full program is modest, I think:  https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free 

[Lori Spencer]

This is so helpful, thanks a million!

[Guest]

15 hours ago, Steven Kossor said:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xYm0T9wgtdNLYquaaeYoUfAuFyieyWG_?usp=share_link

This link contains the complete data download from NARA on 12/15/2022 that has been scanned with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software so that the file contents can be searched efficiently.  A program like TreeSize can scan the entire collection of 148,000+ pages in a few minutes.  A search using the word "ambulance" revealed the Fruge account of Rose Cheramie's claims and documentation of the FBI's involvement in casting aspersions on Ralph Abernathy in advance of his planned appearance at a rally for political candidates, for example.  Best wishes to the research community for a happy Holiday season, new year and beyond!

Happy Holidays and thanks for all your efforts !

[Guest]

Merry Christmas to you, Steven. Thanks for this. 

[John Kennedy White]

15 hours ago, Steven Kossor said:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xYm0T9wgtdNLYquaaeYoUfAuFyieyWG_?usp=share_link

This link contains the complete data download from NARA on 12/15/2022 that has been scanned with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software so that the file contents can be searched efficiently.  A program like TreeSize can scan the entire collection of 148,000+ pages in a few minutes.  A search using the word "ambulance" revealed the Fruge account of Rose Cheramie's claims and documentation of the FBI's involvement in casting aspersions on Ralph Abernathy in advance of his planned appearance at a rally for political candidates, for example.  Best wishes to the research community for a happy Holiday season, new year and beyond!

Time for some binge searching! Thanks for this

[Pamela Brown]

23 hours ago, Steven Kossor said:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xYm0T9wgtdNLYquaaeYoUfAuFyieyWG_?usp=share_link

This link contains the complete data download from NARA on 12/15/2022 that has been scanned with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software so that the file contents can be searched efficiently.  A program like TreeSize can scan the entire collection of 148,000+ pages in a few minutes.  A search using the word "ambulance" revealed the Fruge account of Rose Cheramie's claims and documentation of the FBI's involvement in casting aspersions on Ralph Abernathy in advance of his planned appearance at a rally for political candidates, for example.  Best wishes to the research community for a happy Holiday season, new year and beyond!

Excellent. Thank you! 

Merry Christmas!

[Lawrence Schnapf]

Fabulous! MFF is in the process of doing this and it should be on the website next week

[Steven Kossor]

I sent a few dozen .mp3 recordings I made from cassettes loaned to me by Doug Horne of ARRB interviews (some contain really interesting statements) a few years ago to the MFF and received a complimentary membership in return, but they never posted the recordings anywhere that I could find.  JFK Lancer had them on their site, but I think they closed and haven't heard from Deborah Conway about them in more than a year.  The recordings improve the fidelity and clarity of Doug's audio cassettes significantly and I'd like to make them available to the research community if anyone's interested.  Some people found them helpful over the years and thanked me for them.  I'm surprised MFF doesn't feature them somewhere in their "audio" section. 

[Lawrence Schnapf]

Steven- why dont you send a note to Rex at info@maryferrell.org.