I am pleased to announce a new pilot project from the Office of Innovation at the National Archives called the “History Hub.” This new platform may be thought of as an external collaboration network, a place where subject matter experts from the National Archives can engage with researchers and the public, to share information, work … Continue reading Launch and Learn: Our New History Hub Pilot Project
The Presidential Rank Award Program was created to recognize “sustained extraordinary accomplishment” by career senior executives in the Federal Government. In a highly competitive process, executives nominated by their agency heads are evaluated by citizen panels and designated by the President of the United States. Recipients are deemed to be strong leaders, professionals, or scientists … Continue reading Releasing All We Can, Protecting What We Must
Receipt for fruit cake, March 1918. National Archives Identifier: 6233802 / Local Identifier: HST-BWT_5_3_03_01 This is a receipt for a fruit cake purchased by Bess Wallace at the Jones Store, a Kansas City, Missouri Department store, to send to her fiancé, Harry S. Truman, who was stationed in France with the United States Army 129th … Continue reading Happy Holidays from AOTUS!
At the end of the Vietnam War, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodians fled political chaos and physical danger in their homelands. Between 1975 and 1979, some 300,000 of these refugees were admitted to the United States through Presidential action. The law at the time restricted refugee admissions, and many members of Congress wanted … Continue reading Making Room for Those in Danger
Last week, A’Lelia Bundles, the Chair and President of the National Archives Foundation, and I presented the 2015 National Archives Foundation Records of Achievement Award to Taylor Branch, an American author and Pulitzer Prize winner. This award recognizes Branch’s lifelong work chronicling the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the history of the … Continue reading 2015 Records of Achievement Award
The National Archives’ Strategic Plan includes the ambitious initiative to digitize our analog records and make them available for online public access. With over 12 billion pages of records in our holdings, this is no small undertaking. As we work to make more of our holdings available online, it is also important to see how … Continue reading By the Numbers: Digitization and Citizen Engagement
At the National Archives, we connect with customers in a multitude of ways: face-to-face, over the phone, across the desk, in our research rooms, in the classroom and of course, online. We serve a diverse set of customer communities, including educators, historians, genealogists, researchers, veterans and now groups such as civic hackers, Wikipedians and many … Continue reading By the Numbers: Connecting with Customers in Person and Online
The core mission of the National Archives has always been to make the holdings of the U.S. government available to the public. As the number of views on our website and social media platforms continue to grow each year, we are reminded of the importance of providing access to those holdings in a variety of … Continue reading By The Numbers: Maximizing Value through Web and Social Media
In a symposium held at the LBJ Presidential Library recently, the Central Intelligence Agency released 2,500 previously classified daily briefings created for Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy in the 1960s. The President’s Daily Brief (PDB) began as the President’s Intelligence Checklist (PICL) in June of 1961 as a way to keep the … Continue reading Intelligence to the First Customer
Pope Francis arrived in Washington, DC yesterday to begin a six-day visit to the United States. This morning, the White House hosted a welcoming ceremony for the Pope on the South Lawn of the White House, and on Thursday, the Pope will address members of Congress. This is not the first time the Pope has … Continue reading Papal Visits to the United States
