Historical records can be powerful sources for reporting, and helping readers explore primary documents on their own can give your investigation extra credibility. Read ahead to see how the San Francisco Public Press used DocumentCloud to organize and explore fading paper records for a series on U.S. military experiments.

As part of their “Exposed” investigative series, the San Francisco Public Press uploaded more than 80 historical documents chronicling decades of radiation experiments by a Navy lab in California. The eight-part project was years in the making, and heavily relied on DocumentCloud’s annotation and embedding features.

One historical record, “The History of the U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory,” revealed that these human radiation experiments exposed “volunteers”—including dockworkers, military personnel, lab employees and others—to thermal burns and beta radiation with the approval of Navy officials.

Preserving historical documents

The Exposed series also created a way to preserve these historical documents about the lab’s testing on humans.

The team uploaded dozens of historical documents, liberating them from old, crumbling cardboard boxes. These are all that remain of the public records on these human radiation experiments, after millions of pages were shredded by Naval officials.

“The Navy destroyed most of the lab’s library upon closure in 1969,” said Michael Stoll, senior editor and co-founder of the San Francisco Public Press. “In oral histories we later discovered, prominent scientists lamented being unable to find records of their own work.”

Using DocumentCloud’s note feature, reporters at the San Francisco Public Press highlighted passages from these documents, including a written acknowledgement of the Secretary of the Navy’s approval of radiation testing. DocumentCloud’s embedding feature allows for more in-depth storytelling, allowing the public to read primary documents.

Organizing archival materials with DocumentCloud

“DocumentCloud was an essential tool for annotating, collating and embedding archival materials, allowing the editors and reporters to provide contextual information and enabling readers to explore the primary sources themselves,” according to Stoll.

“DocumentCloud allowed us to present primary materials from diverse sources in a consistent format. We had records we photocopied at a repository of decades-old fading paper records at a National Archives branch office, documents sent to us after FOIA requests to multiple federal agencies, poorly scanned files in obscure online databases and snapshots of articles from publications that have since disappeared. In the process, we created a collection of materials that will help future scholars and laypeople alike make sense of a complex topic with a little more clarity.

“It also enabled our team to present the records in a layered way. We consistently linked out to DocumentCloud and added a document emoji (📄) to indicate this was part of our own database, not an outside source. That gave the project a sense of consistency and intentionality. Where helpful, we added annotations to highlighted areas of records for context. We also used the repository as a place to link dozens of footnotes in a sidebar that consisted of a timeline of human radiation experiments. This helps readers determine for themselves whether we accurately counted the number of individuals who were subjects in each experiment, if they are so motivated.

“We extensively used the embedding feature to show records inline within five of the eight articles, further demonstrating the flexibility of the tools and the power of showing documents, not just telling readers about them,” Stoll said.

By using DocumentCloud, the team of reporters was able to better understand and organize these important historical documents in their reporting.

Embedding firsthand accounts of the radiation testing provides more context to their investigation and allows the readers to explore these documents after the series is completed. To explore the entirety of these documents, the San Francisco Public Press have made their ‘Exposed’ project page available on DocumentCloud to the public.

Key takeaways from ‘Exposed’

The Public Press had these takeaways for using DocumentCloud for reporting projects:

• Plan ahead! Some archival documents were not made for public consumption, and will require resources and time to decipher.

• DocumentCloud’s embedding feature makes it easy to show archival documents to readers in the context of your story.

• Labelling documents in your own database will help give your project a sense of consistency and intentionality.

Photo Credit: Illustration by Kelly Kauffman. Photos from History of U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory.