The National Archives’ Strategic Plan includes a simple, but audacious initiative: to digitize our analog records and make them available for online public access. We have over 12 billion pages of records, so yes, this is our moon shot. To achieve this goal, we know we need to think in radically new ways about our … Continue reading The Scan Plan: Our Strategy to Digitize the Vast Holdings of the National Archives
I am pleased to announce that the Office of Management and Budget and the National Archives released a memo yesterday afternoon to the heads of executive departments and independent agencies on managing email. Over the past few weeks, this issue has been brought into focus through testimony that I delivered to the House Committee on Oversight and … Continue reading Additional Guidance on Managing Email Released
"A truly American sentiment recognizes the dignity of labor and the fact that honor lies in honest toil." -Grover Cleveland Public Law 53-95: An Act Making Labor Day a Legal Holiday, June 28, 1894 General Records of the U.S. Government, National Archives and Records Administration
Letter to William McKinley offering to raise a troop of 50 lady sharpshooters to fight the Spanish American War. They would provide their own rifles and ammunition. Unfortunately, women were not allowed to serve at that point in our history. Letter to President William McKinley from Annie Oakley. April 5, 1898. National Archives Identifier 300369
Tracy Bray contacted us recently and wondered if she could bring her father and family for a special visit to the National Archives in Washington. It was a surprise for her father, Harry Edward Neal Jr. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution have special meaning to all of us and especially to the Neal … Continue reading Special Visitors
As the Director of the New York Public Libraries I once had the opportunity to spend an afternoon with Lauren Bacall to pitch the NYPL Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center as the repository for her papers. Accompanying Bob Taylor, then Chief of the Theatre Collection at LPA, we visited her at her home … Continue reading My Afternoon with Bacall
Last night the Young Founder’s Society (YFS) hosted a reception in the Gold Room of the Rayburn House Office Building. The YFS is a membership group for young professionals in the Washington, DC, area who are committed to the work of the Foundation for the National Archives to increase awareness of the cultural and historical … Continue reading The Hill Staff
The Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), established in 1978, is responsible to the President for overseeing the Government-wide security classification program, and receives policy and program guidance from the National Security Council. ISOO has been part of the National Archives and Records Administration since 1995. You can learn more about ISOO at www.archives.gov/isoo The 34th … Continue reading ISOO Report to the President
Stay cool out there this summer! Apparatus for Treating Air – Willis H. Carrier, 09/1904 – 01/02/1906. National Archives Identifier 7268013
I’m loving Joseph McCormack’s new book, Brief: Make a Bigger Impact by Saying Less. The focus is on lean communication. McCormack terms it Six Sigma for your mouth! “In our attention deficit economy, being brief is what’s desperately needed and rarely delivered.” People speak at about 150 words per minute, but we have the mental … Continue reading The Elusive 600
