American Archives Containing a Documentary History of the English Colonies in North America from the King’s Message to Parliament, of March 7, 1774 to the Declaration of Independence by the United States is a two‐disc set. It consists of the 1840 edition of Series Four and Series Five of the volumes compiled by Peter Force under the title Tracts And Other Papers Relating Principally to the Origin, Settlement, and Progress of the Colonies in North America published from 1836 through 1846. Peter Force, who served in the War of 1812, was the son of a Revolutionary War soldier, a printer, publisher, archivist, and a scholar in addition to a civil servant. (He served as Mayor of Washington, D.C. from 1836 to 1840.) The publisher of the CD‐ROMs notes that “the master copy from which these compact discs were made was itself developed from the original text, and not from an edited edition or reprint.”
Force assures us that “we have, personally, examined the publick records in each of the thirteen original States. We regret to say, that we have found these, in some instances, in a lamentable state of deterioration, confusion, and decay; many important documents and publick proceedings appear to be irretrievably lost. We have, however, the satisfaction of believing, that the inquiries and examinations we have instituted, have, in some instances, been instrumental in rescuing many of inestimable value from the very jaws of destruction; and, in others, in awakening a feeling of interest in the memorials of our past history, which promises to result in a more persevering search for such as may still remain in existence, and a more careful preservation of such as have survived the hazards to which they have been exposed.”
Because of the great age of the text, the publisher decided to treat each page as an image (rather than utilizing optical character recognition (O.C.R.) for the text itself. This preserves the character of the original for the reader and maintains the spelling and characters as they appeared in Force’s original presentation. There are no long Fs or Ses typical of colonial‐era printing which makes reading much easier. While the page images are not searchable, the detailed tables of contents and index of each volume have been digitized and hyperlinked to the appropriate page images. This provides thorough search capability even across volumes. In fact, the tables of contents and index also appear as page images for scholarly use and reference.
The product uses datadisc’s QuickSearch as the search engine. It is a very powerful search engine; but it takes some time to get familiar with it. It permits searching the current table of contents section or anywhere in the text which consists of each volume’s table of contents and index, along with the document’s preface, author biography, and other related material. As one begins keying a term, the word wheel goes to the appropriate location in the alphabet. This is important to identify variations in spelling and word usage. For example, Bunker Hill appears most frequently as Bunker‐Hill with other variations under BunkerHill or Bunker’s. There are no entries under the more accurate name of Breed’s Hill.
Experienced searchers can choose a type of search (word, phrase, refine last search) as well as Boolean operators AND (&), OR (|), and NOT (∼) or a wild card (*) . They can also set the proximity of the terms. The search engine defaults to four words apart; but once a researcher sets a proximity value, the configuration retains that setting.
Upon completing a search, QuickSearch builds a numbered list of hits in the results window. Selecting one of the entries goes to the text window with the index page displayed. Here, the researcher clicks on the red image number which corresponds to the appropriate column in the book. This goes to the page image which appears too small for reading at first. Drawing a box around a portion of text, such as a paragraph, will expand the image to the desired size for easy reading. Researchers can place bookmarks, make annotations, or print the image for further reference and use. Sometimes, the image may not appear very clear. Selecting “scale to gray” from the View options will usually make it sharper. One scrolls the text via the scroll bars, as the Page Up, Page Down, and arrow keys don’t work here.
The Toolbar at the top of the screen can be turned on or off, as desired. It contains buttons for File, Search, Clear, First Hit, Previous Hit, Next Hit, Last Hit, Notes, Mark, List, Previous Image, Next Image, Print, and Help. Most of the buttons are self‐explanatory; but a few need some explanation. The Clear button does not clear the search screen as one might expect; it removes the highlighting from the search terms. The List button displays a comprehensive list of images; but it is of little or no use in this database. Each line is numbered sequentially; but the image numbers aside of the line number do not follow in sequential order. Also, the same image number may apply to many separate entries, corresponding to multiple entries in the same column and the same column number occurring across several volumes. For example, 877 has 71 corresponding entries.
Selecting Next or Previous Image will produce different results, depending on the reader’s location. If one selects a particular volume to read sequentially or searches the table of contents, the buttons will operate much like turning the page of a book. However, if the search locates an item in the index, pressing the Next Image button will go to the next image listed in the index and not to the continuation of the text on a subsequent page.
The product comes with an electronic User Guide and Help utility accessible from the Help Menu. The main sections cover Searching and Browsing, Viewing images, Printing, User Annotations, and the Toolbar. Despite its navigational peculiarities and occasional inconsistencies (e.g. the Page Up and Page Down keys work in some locations but not others), American Archives is a valuable research tool for serious students of history. It contains much valuable primary source material that has since been lost, damaged, or seriously threatened by decay. Even libraries that own copies of the printed publication will find it useful for its searching capabilities to locate documents among the multiple volumes. While most of the volumes group the documents chronologically, the compiler added newly identified documents at the end of a series or at the beginning of the subsequent series. American Archives offers researchers in American colonial history a compilation of documents that are not contained anywhere else, except for few instances. It gives new life to a long‐forgotten and underused publication that contains a wealth of primary source information.
