JFK Assassination Archive

Now available for your desktop – a unparalleled personal research tool for studying Kennedy assassination records.

This page provides information about the JFK Assassination Archive, a personal and portable JFK assassination research tool. Plug this hard disk into your computer and access over 1 million pages of documents and other resources, using sophisticated and fast browsing and searching tools. Available for purchase right now.

About the JFK Assassination Archive

The JFK Assassination Archive is a research tool produced as a joint venture between the Assassination Archives and Research Center, History Matters, and the Mary Ferrell Foundation. It is a portable USB disk drive containing much of the MFF’s archived primary source materials, along with a next-generation set of tools to access them which goes beyond that offered online. See the following Feature sections for all the details on this amazing new research tool.

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Features of the JFK Assassination Archive

Each section below may be expanded for details and screenshots – click any “more” link.

Million-Page Document Archive and More

The disk contains the JFK portion of the MFF’s document archive (with PDF copies of all documents), along with 15 chapter-length book excerpts, photo and audio archives, and interactive resources….more »

Enhanced Document Viewer

The viewer used to view scanned document pages is faster than the MFF website’s, and features the ability to smoothly zoom in and out of a page. It also has a keyboard interface for fast page-flipping and keyboard access to other features….more »

Powerful New Search Engine

A completely new search engine offers many enhancements, including date-range filtering and other ways to constrain searches. The system also searches photo captions and other data. RIF Search is also improved….more »

Auto-Linking to References

Document references like WR222, 4WH17, CE 399, CD207, p.11, 104-10400-10010, and so on appear in many places, including document pages, Mary Ferrell Database entries, and elsewhere. These references are now links; just click to see the document….more »

RIF Tools

More than 100,000 documents feature the National Archive’s Resource Identification Forms (RIF)—these forms may be searched, and other special disk features make use of them….more »

Enhanced Photo Archive

Photo galleries now can be perused via a convenient thumbnail slider. Also, full-resolution versions of each image are available right on the disk. Photo captions are searchable, so photos are included in search results…more »

Enhanced Interactive Resources

The disk contains three document walkthroughs and four interactive projects. Two of these, the Mary Ferrell Database, and Stewart Galanor’s Dealey Plaza Witness Database, have been significantly enhanced for this disk….more »

PDF Copies

Like the MFF website, the standard document viewing engine is a customized one. But every document on the disk has an accompanying PDF file, and these load quickly and can be read in the browser or any other PDF viewer….more »

Plus, it’s fast and portable! Requires no software installation. Runs using your web browser, but requires no internet connection.

How Does This Product Relate to the MFF Website?

There is certainly substantial overlap between the JFK Assassination Archive and the Mary Ferrell Foundation website. What’s the difference? Why this product?

First, the disk does not contain all the materials on the website. See the above Feature explanations for details, but basically the JFK Assassination Archive is limited to the JFK documents (not MLK, RFK, Watergate, etc.), and also does not have the Starting Points, essays, journals, or other introductory materials (it does feature 15 chapter-length book excerpts).

What it does offer is a set of browsing and searching tools which are a substantial cut above what is available online. These include new search features, better tools for document viewing including smooth zoom, PDF versions of all documents, automatic linking of inter-document references, enhanced versions of interactive tools like Mary Ferrell’s Database and Stewart Galanor’s Dealey Plaza Witness Database, and more. See the Features above for full details. Plus, it’s fast and portable, and requires no internet connection, and no software installation.

This disk has been a testbed for new technology development, but a full rewrite of the Mary Ferrell website has not been practical. At some point these features may become available online. In the meantime, the JFK Assassination Archive stands alongside the MFF website as a premier research tool for those doing research using primary documents.

Another motivation for this disk was simply to get these important documents into more hands, after a decades-long hard-fought battle for open access to JFK records.

For More Information

If you have more questions not answered on this page, please email rex AT history-matters DOT com, the creator of this disk.