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Kickstarter seeks to make CIA Records Search Tool accessible to researchers

Michael Franco – cnet: “Currently, more than 11 million pages of declassified CIA documents are publicly available via an electronic database called CREST, or the CIA Records Search Tool. While some of these documents — like a batch of UFO related files the CIA cleverly calls its X-Files — are available online, many can only be seen by visiting a National Archives building in Maryland. Making things even more complicated, only four tucked-away computers can access the database and it’s only staffed for half a day, according to [Michael] Best. Best launched a Kickstarter campaign to make these declassified documents more easily available to the public. His plan is to head into the archives, print out millions of pages of information, digitize them and upload them to the Internet Archive, a free online digital library. Best claims to have uploaded a full one percent of the content in the Internet Archive, an impressive feat considering the digital repository contains almost 9 million books and millions of audio and video clips…”

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