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
238 years ago, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. And John Adams envisioned future celebrations of the event. In a letter to his wife, he wrote: “It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It out to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, … Continue reading Happy Fourth of July!
Arlette Farge, Director of Research in Modern History at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, has written a wonderful little book about doing research in archives. “Contact with the archives begins with simple tasks, one of which is handling the documents. Combing through the archives—a beautifully evocative term—requires a host of tasks, … Continue reading The Allure of the Archives
Today marks the 70th Anniversary of the D-Day invasion. To commemorate this anniversary, this month’s patent is Andrew Higgins’s landing boat. It is dated February 15, 1944, less than four months before D-Day. LCVPs--or Higgins boats, as they are now commonly known --transported troops from the 1st Infantry onto Omaha Beach. They could each carry … Continue reading Patent of the Month: Higgins boats
This month we celebrate the one year anniversary of the launch of Founders Online – a tool for seamless searching across the papers of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton. In the past year, the site has received over 400,000 visits. An example of the power of the … Continue reading One Year of Founders Online
Who says civics is dead? Click on the video and watch these 5th graders in action! And then read their petition. Enough said! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlf7PoRVTRg
