DISCLOSURE / FILE

CIA CREST Database Online Release, UFOs: Fact or Fiction Collection, CIA FOIA Reading Room UFO collection.html

CIA's January 2017 online release of the full CREST database, including a curated UFOs: Fact or Fiction collection of roughly 2,780 UFO-related pages spanning 1947 through the 1990s.

Brief

On January 17 2017 the Central Intelligence Agency moved its CREST (CIA Records Search Tool) database of approximately 13 million declassified pages online, ending the prior requirement that researchers travel to the National Archives in College Park, Maryland to use four dedicated terminals. The release included a curated UFOs: Fact or Fiction collection of roughly 2,780 pages of UFO-related material dated from 1947 through the 1990s. The landing page is the CIA FOIA Reading Room. The underlying source files for this index entry are the war.gov listing description and the HTML capture of the reading-room page; no extractable page text was provided for verbatim quotation.

Metadata

Agency: Central Intelligence Agency
Release: 2017-01-17
Type: PDF • .html
Length: 2.3 K
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Programs: CREST (CIA Records Search Tool), UFOs: Fact or Fiction
Tags: CREST, CIA FOIA Reading Room, UFOs: Fact or Fiction, 1947-1990s, bulk declassification

Key points

CIA published the full CREST database of approximately 13 million declassified pages to the online FOIA Reading Room on January 17 2017.p.1
A curated UFOs: Fact or Fiction collection of approximately 2,780 UFO-related pages, spanning 1947 through the 1990s, is part of the release.p.1
Before the online release, CREST was only searchable in person at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland.p.1
The release is hosted at the CIA FOIA Reading Room and indexed as a single collection landing page rather than as individually-tagged document records.p.1

Most interesting

The 2,780-page UFO subset is a CIA curatorial selection, not the full universe of UFO-tagged material in CREST; researchers running their own keyword queries against the 13-million-page corpus surface additional documents not included in the curated collection.
Until January 2017, CREST access required physically traveling to four dedicated terminals at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, an access barrier that shaped which researchers could work with the corpus.

Brief

Key points

CIA published the full CREST database of approximately 13 million declassified pages to the online FOIA Reading Room on January 17 2017.p.1

A curated UFOs: Fact or Fiction collection of approximately 2,780 UFO-related pages, spanning 1947 through the 1990s, is part of the release.p.1

Before the online release, CREST was only searchable in person at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland.p.1

The release is hosted at the CIA FOIA Reading Room and indexed as a single collection landing page rather than as individually-tagged document records.p.1

Most interesting

The 2,780-page UFO subset is a CIA curatorial selection, not the full universe of UFO-tagged material in CREST; researchers running their own keyword queries against the 13-million-page corpus surface additional documents not included in the curated collection.

Until January 2017, CREST access required physically traveling to four dedicated terminals at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, an access barrier that shaped which researchers could work with the corpus.