The Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB) at the National Archives has been hard at work this year developing recommendations to the President of the United States to transform the national security classification system. PIDB is an advisory committee established by Congress to advise and provide recommendations to the President and other executive branch officials on … Continue reading Transforming Classification
This is a snapshot of a variety of data points we are tracking to measure how we are doing. I am especially interested in trends as we focus more and more on digital access. Is the investment paying off in terms of numbers of eyeballs on our content? What impact does online access have on … Continue reading By The Numbers
Colleen Wallace Nungari’s painting, Dreamtime Sisters, was selected as the “brand” for the International Council on Archives Congress which closes today in Brisbane, Australia. More than 1,000 archivists from 95 countries gathered to dream about the future around the theme, "A Climate of Change." Dreamtime … Continue reading Capturing Living Memory
Last Saturday I spoke to an enthusiastic crowd of Wikimedians at the Wikimania 2012 Conference here in Washington. Over 1400 people from 87 countries came together to talk, hack, and share their expertise and experiences at the week-long event. I was glad to share in their joie de vivre and to talk about our common … Continue reading Wikimania 2012
On his first day on the job President Barack Obama told his Senior Staff, “Our commitment to openness means more than simply informing the American people about how decisions are made. It means recognizing that Government does not have all the answers, and that public officials need to draw on what citizens know. And that’s … Continue reading Solving the Problems of Our Time
Until fairly recently, social media has been seen as experimental and outside the realm of the essential work of our agency. Today that is simply no longer the case. Smart use of social media is now mission-critical to our agency. As the agency charged with advising Federal Agencies and the White House on the records … Continue reading Join the Chorus
Almost 100 years ago, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote: “Sunlight is said to be the best disinfectant. If the broad light of day could be let in upon men’s actions, it would purify them as the sun disinfects.” I like to think that we celebrate Sunshine Week every day at the National Archives. We have a … Continue reading Happy Sunshine Week!
On January 10th, I blogged about the “Yes We Scan” petitions proposed by Carl Malamud’s PublicResource.org on the White House’s We The People petition platform. “Yes We Scan” calls for a national strategy, and even a Federal Scanning Commission, to figure out what it would take to digitize the holdings of many federal entities, from … Continue reading Yes We Scan Again! The Archives chats with voters on a “We the People” teleconference
In September 2011, the White House launched an online petition web site, We the People, where anyone can post an idea asking the Obama administration to take action on a range of issues, get signatures, and get a response from their government. It’s an experiment in democracy, which is generating new ideas and improving on … Continue reading “Yes We Scan”
Today we launch the Citizen Archivist Dashboard (http://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/) and encourage you to get involved in elevating the visibility of the records of the United States. Did you know that many grade school children aren’t taught cursive handwriting anymore and can’t read cursive? Help us transcribe records and guarantee that school children can make use of … Continue reading Together We Can Do It!
