As the nation’s record keeper, we are passionate about the opportunity to support research and scholarship at the National Archives. As part of this commitment to research and inquiry, we recently awarded the first National Archives Legislative Archives Fellowship to Dr. Peter Shulman, Assistant Professor of History at Case Western Reserve University. Peter Shulman in … Continue reading In Support of Scholarship
Every time I visit a National Archives site around the country, I learn something new. Passionate staff educates me about the nature of the records in our custody. At each stop I have jaw-dropping moments. In a recent visit with our Chicago staff, I learned about Record Group 21, Records of District Courts of the … Continue reading “You Puta Da $200.00 Dollars In A The Alley…”
Last week I had an opportunity to address the Preservation Section meeting of the Society of American Archivists. The theme of the meeting was holdings protection—balancing access to holdings with safeguarding them. And two of our Holdings Protection staff, Larry Evangelista and Richard Dine participated in a panel discussion reporting on what we have accomplished … Continue reading Reflections on Collection Security
On June 15th we launched our tagging feature on the Online Public Access (OPA) prototype in another “citizen archivist” venture. Convinced that our users know a lot about the records we are stewarding, this is an opportunity to contribute that knowledge. As you search the catalog, you are invited to tag any archival description, person, … Continue reading The Wisdom of the Crowd
Last Thursday, a Federal grand jury indicted Barry Landau and Jason Savedoff “…for conspiring to steal historical documents from museums in Maryland and New York, and selling them for profit.” On Friday they were arraigned in Baltimore’s U.S. District Court and immediately arrested by FBI and NARA Office of the Inspector General (OIG) Special Agents. … Continue reading Balancing Access and Protection
A career-long fascination and appreciation of the work of those involved in conservation and preservation can be traced to my very first job in the MIT Humanities Library. There I learned about the special needs of vellum and leather bindings, the temperature and humidity requirements of paper, and the principle of never doing anything which … Continue reading Conservation Challenge: The Magna Carta
The coincidence of reading James E. Valle’s Rocks and Shoals: Order and Discipline in the Old Navy, 1800-1861 and the opening of the America Eats Tavern which is serving grog for the first time is the inspiration for this post. Rocks and Shoals documents punishments in the form of flogging meted out for such infractions … Continue reading Grog and Flog
As someone who likes to cook and collects cookbooks for inspiration, I am high on the latest exhibit to open here at the National Archives. AOTUS welcomes the press at the "What's Cooking, Uncle Sam?" exhibit preview at the National Archives. “What’s Cooking, Uncle Sam?” takes a look at the Government’s role in food, a … Continue reading What’s Cooking?
This week I was in Kansas City visiting two of our three facilities in the area. The limestone caves at Lenexa hold both temporary and permanent records of Federal agencies in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska including the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Veterans Affairs. In addition, the growing collection of records of … Continue reading The One Who Got Away
Iodite of potassium, sulphate of iron, nitrate of silver, rice starch, ferro cyanite of potassium, and even lemon juice. These are some of the ingredients necessary to reproduce the secret writing techniques described in the six documents declassified by the CIA last week as part of the work of the National Declassification Center (NDC). The … Continue reading Spies and Secret Writing
