Clio Wired (History 696)

While the idea sounded really cool, "Wow, a bunch of declassified documents. What juicy goodies are therein to behold.....?" It turned out to be much drier than I expected. The main purpose of this assignment was to devise a research and writing project using this archive that can't be done with a normal print archive. In this respect I fail. Maybe my imagination is running a little dry today, but the NSA was just a collection of reviews and research about the documents on file. The one aspect that is made easier with the web site, is the search tool. This, like normal search tools, allows you to search for an 'exact phrase,' 'all words,' or 'any words' within the documents available. This would be a bit strenuous in a print archive, but was the only thing I could find which would make research through this archive easier.

The layout of the site is not extraordinarily difficult. A menu at the top provides a constant link to the different aspects of the site. The links on the left side menu lead to pages with a different color scheme, which at first was confusing. The documents available on the site are interspersed with quite a bit of explanation, or are linked within an NSA researcher's paper. A few of the projects were simply a list of documents, images, or microfiche that are only available in their library on the campus of GWU. The main structure is laid out in world regions, with most projects providing links to related studies and further documents relevant to the topic.