E-Books
The Office of the Historian at the U.S. Department of State is pleased to announce the
release of its Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series in a
new e-book format that is readable on popular electronic devices such as the Amazon Kindle
and Apple iPad. The e-book edition combines many of the benefits of print and web
publications in a new form that is portable and extremely convenient. During the pilot phase
of the FRUS e-book initiative, five selected FRUS volumes are available here. The
public is invited to download the new e-books and provide feedback to help improve the
FRUS e-book edition. At the conclusion of the pilot phase later this year, the
Office will work to offer e-book versions of many more FRUS volumes both through
the Office website and on a wide array of e-bookstores. The Office will continue to expand
and enhance its e-book offerings, as part of the ongoing FRUS digitization effort.
The FRUS e-book initiative is an outgrowth of the Office of the Historian’s efforts
to optimize the series for its website. Because the Office adopted the Text Encoding Initiative’s open, robust XML-based file
format (TEI), a single digital master TEI file can store an entire FRUS volume and
can be transformed into either a set of web pages or an e-book. The free, open source eXist-db server that powers the entire Office of the
Historian website also provides the tools needed to transform the FRUS TEI files
into HTML and e-book formats.
For questions about the FRUS e-book initiative, please see our FAQ below; for other questions or to provide feedback, please contact history_ebooks@state.gov. To receive updates about new releases, return to this
page, or follow us on Twitter at @HistoryAtState.
The following 27 publications are available during the current phase of our release:
FAQ
E-Reader Basics
- Q: Which FRUS e-book should I
download (i.e., ePub or Mobipocket)?
- A: This depends on what e-reader you use. The Apple iBooks app, the Barnes &
Noble Nook, and many other e-reader apps and devices use the ePub format. Amazon
Kindle devices and apps use the Mobipocket format.
- Q: What e-reader devices and apps have
FRUS e-books been tested upon?
- A: We have tested FRUS e-books on iOS devices (using iBooks, Kobo, Bluefire
Reader, Subtext, and Kindle apps), Kindle (Keyboard and Fire), and Android (using
Bluefire and Alkido). We encourage users of other devices and apps to report their
experiences with the pilot FRUS e-books.
Loading FRUS E-Books
- Q: From which e-bookstores can I download
FRUS e-books during the pilot phase of the Foreign Relations
e-book initiative?
- A: FRUS e-books are currently only available from the history.state.gov website. We hope to make
the FRUS e-books available from all major e-bookstores at a later stage in
the FRUS e-book initiative.
- Q: If FRUS isn’t available from
an e-bookstore, how can I load the e-books onto my device or into my app during the
pilot phase of the Foreign Relations e-book initiative?
- A: Consult the instructions provided by your app developer or device manufacturer to
“side-load” the e-book file into your e-reader. Please note that e-reader devices or
apps that do not allow side-loading cannot be used to read “beta” Foreign
Relations e-books.
- iBooks (Apple iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch): Select “Can I
download books from other websites?” from the iBooks: Frequently Asked
Questions
- Amazon Kindle: Search Kindle Support for “transferring” and select instructions specific
to your device/app
- Barnes & Noble Nook: Search Nook
Support for “side-load” and select instructions specific to your
device/app
Citing FRUS E-Books
- Q: Since e-books do not have stable page
numbers, how can I cite references to FRUS e-books?
- A: Use document numbers rather than page numbers. Document numbers are persistent, media-neutral identifiers. For example, to cite this
memorandum from the SALT I, 1969-1972 volume, use:
U.S. Department of State, Foreign
Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Vol. XXXII, SALT I,
1969-1972 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2010),
Doc. 262.
rather than U.S. Department of State, Foreign
Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Vol. XXXII, SALT I,
1969-1972 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2010),
774-781.
Known Issues
- Issue: FRUS e-book footnote
behavior on Kindle devices and the Kindle app.
- Decription: Footnotes are hyperlinked in FRUS e-books so that activating a
footnote reference will navigate directly to the text of the footnote (and vice
versa). On Kindle devices and apps, activating the hyperlink from the footnote text
back to the footnote reference in the document will navigate to the content
immediately following the reference. We are investigating the issue.
- Issue: Indexes in pre-Johnson era FRUS
refer to page numbers rather than document numbers
- Decription: In creating this e-book edition, we have endeavored to maintain fidelity
with the original printed edition wherever feasible. Unfortunately, fidelity is not
always possible. For example, representing original page numbers from printed
editions in e-books remains a challenge. This has obvious implications for
citations, as described in “Citing FRUS E-books” above. But since the
indexes in pre-Johnson administration volumes refer to page numbers rather than document
numbers, we have found they cannot be used “as is” in e-book versions. We continue
to explore this issue in the hope that we can find ways to restore the valuable
functionality provided by page number references and indexes, but in the meantime,
we have suppressed indexes in e-books for pre-Johnson administration volumes.
Volumes from the Johnson administration onward, whose indexes reference document
numbers, are unaffected by this issue.
Helpful Tips
- Tip: Using bookmarks.
- Description: Many e-readers allow users to set multiple bookmarks and navigate to
them quickly from an easily-accessible list of all the assigned bookmarks in a given
e-book. FRUS e-book users can take advantage of this feature to place
bookmarks on frequently-used resources, like the Persons, Source, and/or the Terms
and Abbreviations lists that are located at the beginning of each volume. Many
e-readers also allow you to jump back to a previous location, making it easy to take
advantage of the information in a FRUS e-book’s front matter without losing
your place in the volume.
- Tip: Using the table of contents.
- Description: In addition to a hyperlinked version of the table of contents listing
chapters in the compilation that appears in the beginning pages of a printed
FRUS volume, FRUS e-books provide users with richly detailed
lists of individual documents and their source notes at the beginning of each
chapter and in the general table of contents accessible via the e-reader’s table of
contents feature.
- Tip: Using full-text search.
- Description: Like the volumes accessible on history.state.gov, FRUS e-books are fully text-searchable. The
features and behavior of the search engine depends on your e-reader device/app.
Providing Feedback or Other Questions
- Q: How can I provide feedback or ask a question not answered here?
- A: We welcome your feedback or other questions not answered here. Please contact us at history_ebooks@state.gov.