We thought some of you would appreciate a bit of information about what's behind the curtain. If you're not interested and you'd rather just read, that's fine too.

HumaneWatch is organized around four databases:

• this blog;
• a list of HSUS-related organizations;
• a list of HSUS-related people; and
• a database-drive library of primary- and secondary-source documents.

Each blog article, organization, person, and document can be "related" to other entities in the system, and you'll find pretty much everything on this website is "tagged" with its connections to other material.

For example, consider a tax return filed by the Humane Society Legislative Fund for the fiscal year 2008. It would have a connection to that organization; to every person mentioned in the document itself; and to blog articles where we discuss or dissect it.

Plus, since the tax return is a "financial document," it's automatically related to all the other financial documents in the system. And it's also related to other documents filed in 2008.

See? It's simple.

Over time, you'll be able to sort and view the contents of HumaneWatch by year; by organization; by individual people; by various "types" of documents (e.g., financial papers, correspondence, fundraising letters, newspaper articles, photographs, videos); and by the various subject matters we'll cover (e.g., meat, circuses, fur, hunting).

Feel free to recommend connections that we've missed along the way. And, of course, thanks for your interest (and your patience) as HumaneWatch grows.