About the Digital Edition

In creating this digital edition, the Office of the Historian focused on maintaining the original structure of the microfiche supplement while bringing it up to the current standards of the Foreign Relations series. The editors supplied a heading and source note for each document based on the text from the List of Documents. In those instances in which the documents also included images of attachments and covering memoranda, the editors provided headings to mark these divisions, though this was not indicated in the List of Documents. In the digital edition, the editors examined the document images and added material such as the date, time of transmission, and location to document datelines when unavailable in the List of Documents entry. Numerous documents are partially or completely illegible; those that were known to have had such problems during the preparation of the microfiche were stamped: “Best copy available” and the editors have indicated gaps in legibility by inserting “[illegible in the original].” All brackets, except those indicating illegible or redacted text, are in the original.

During review, the editors discovered the following problems with images in the microfiche edition and made the following corrections:

  • Documents 71 and 72: The eight pages of attachments to Document 71 mentioned in the List of Documents entry were included chronologically after Document 72 in the microfiche. The editors assigned the attachments the new document number 72A, provided a heading and dateline, and left them where they were found in the original.
  • Frame 97 of fiche sheet 7 [Document 106] is a duplication of frame 1, fiche sheet 7 [Document 79, page 5] and was not included.
  • Document 130, footnote 2: The 3rd page of Document 130 is likely the typed correction intended to be inserted in place of the struck through text in the note to the table in paragraph 7. It is reproduced as the final clause in footnote 2.
  • Document 302A: This document was not included in the original List of Documents. The editors supplied a heading and source note from the document cover sheet at fiche sheet 24, frame 51, and assigned it the document number listed on the cover sheet.

About the Preview Edition

In 2013, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the Office of the Historian released a preview of this digital edition of Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volumes VII, VIII, IX, Arms Control; National Security Policy; Foreign Economic Policy, Microfiche Supplement. The original microfiche was scanned in image form (2,913 images in all, including front matter and 482 documents), but the text had not yet been extracted from these images. Thus, the text of the preview was not searchable or accessible to screen readers. The preview edition contained a downloadable PDF of the volume’s front matter, as well as the complete text of the List of Documents; a link to a PDF was available for each document. The digital edition includes all of this material.