Sunshine Week is an annual nationwide celebration of access to public information. It was launched more than a decade ago by the American Society of News Editors, and is embraced by journalists, librarians, concerned citizens, civil society organizations, elected officials, and government employees as an opportunity to discuss the importance of open government and its … Continue reading Celebrating Information Access: Sunshine Week 2018
The National Archives and Records Administration has been able to accomplish some incredible digitization and outreach work over the years due in part to contributions and support by anonymous donors and the National Archives Foundation. Two examples of this are the World War I Wartime Films project, and the Ratified Indian Treaties vault digitization project. … Continue reading Make Access Happen
On February 14, we made a great match. Together with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and our own National Historical Publications and Records Commission, we announced the eight planning-grant recipients for our joint Digital Edition Publishing Cooperatives Program. These eight cooperatives will test out new ways of making historical records more readily accessible to scholars, … Continue reading NHPRC and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Launch Digital Publishing Initiative
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." Despite this expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied … Continue reading The Emancipation Proclamation
An article recently appeared in the media about allegations of serious sexual harassment by former Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein. Weinstein served as the 9th Archivist of the United States from 2005 to 2008. Shortly after becoming the 10th Archivist of the United States in 2009, I learned of the allegations against Weinstein, … Continue reading National Archives Does Not Tolerate Harassment
In the spirit of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Day of Service, join us this week, January 15—19, 2018, for the Citizen Archivist Week of Service. Our goal is to tag or transcribe 2,018 pages in the National Archives Catalog during this week-long challenge. Can you help us meet this goal? Get started by … Continue reading Join us for Citizen Archivist Week of Service!
Tis the season to give holiday gifts. Here in the Office of the Archivist, we are in the business of giving gifts all year round. One of the little-known things that we do is provide facsimile gifts for the President of the United States. My staff receive requests from the State Department Protocol Office for … Continue reading Archival Gift-Giving
Someone in the Office of War Information (OWI) News Bureau was certainly having a jolly old time on Christmas Eve 1942, when they wrote this memorandum concerning rumors flying around (by way of a reindeer-led sled) about a “man in whiskers who … will come down many chimneys bringing gifts to hundreds of American homes.” … Continue reading Holiday Humor in World War II
As the nation’s record keeper, the National Archives is responsible for making the records of the U.S. Government available to the public. These records—some famous but others quite ordinary—tell the nation's story, document the actions of government officials over the years, and confirm the rights guaranteed to individuals. They are records that deserve preservation not … Continue reading Pursuing Civic Literacy
As a veteran of the Vietnam War, I was determined to mark the 50th anniversary of the height of the Vietnam War with an exhibit here at the National Archives. Our records, some recently declassified, continue to yield discoveries and provide insight and evidence for people seeking to understand the war. In Remembering Vietnam, we … Continue reading “Remembering Vietnam” Exhibit Entered into Congressional Record
