On April 1, 1940 over 120,000 census takers fanned out across the United States to begin conducting the 1940 census. Over the next several weeks they would enumerate over 131,000,000 residents of the country from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to families living in the remotest areas of the nation. Genealogists, social scientists, historians, and others, … Continue reading 1940 Census Release
On Tuesday of this week I had a chance to visit the construction site of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum on the Southern Methodist University campus in Dallas, Texas. Some 700 workers were onsite at the time, inside and outside, to bring this latest addition to the National Archives in on schedule … Continue reading A New Presidential Library
In Dallas this week I accepted two photo albums documenting artwork and furniture stolen by German troops in Paris. The albums were created under Hermann Goering’s direction by Alfred Rosenberg who led the Nazi agency, Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) and served as pick lists for Adolph Hitler. Hitler intended to create a museum in Austria. … Continue reading Nazi Looting Documentation
Writing in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, Melinda Beck quotes Kit Anderson, past president of the Institute for Challenging Disorganization (check out their website! www.nsgcd.org): “Digital clutter doesn’t beget mice or interfere with walking around the house. But it’s more insidious because no one else is going to insist that you get help.” It is an … Continue reading Digital Hoarding
Many, many years ago when I was shelving books in the MIT Humanities Library I was fortunate to have the benefit of advice from several members of the staff who took an interest in my “career.” One of them was the Science Librarian, Irma Johnson. I got to know Irma well because every summer she … Continue reading Thank You, Irma Johnson
Almost 100 years ago, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote: “Sunlight is said to be the best disinfectant. If the broad light of day could be let in upon men’s actions, it would purify them as the sun disinfects.” I like to think that we celebrate Sunshine Week every day at the National Archives. We have a … Continue reading Happy Sunshine Week!
The National Archives keeps looking for ways to work with other agencies to spark citizen engagement with our records. Our most recent project is the Document Your Environment contest for students, which we co-sponsored with the Environmental Protection Agency. We invited students aged 13 and older to explore some of the nearly 16,000 photos in … Continue reading iRevolution
On January 10th, I blogged about the “Yes We Scan” petitions proposed by Carl Malamud’s PublicResource.org on the White House’s We The People petition platform. “Yes We Scan” calls for a national strategy, and even a Federal Scanning Commission, to figure out what it would take to digitize the holdings of many federal entities, from … Continue reading Yes We Scan Again! The Archives chats with voters on a “We the People” teleconference
I had an opportunity to provide the keynote address at a recent meeting of the Association of Library and Information School Education (ALISE). The Association has been active since 1915 in providing a forum for archive and library educators to share ideas, to discuss issues, and to seek solutions to common problems. As I have … Continue reading Thinking About the Future
In September 2011, the White House launched an online petition web site, We the People, where anyone can post an idea asking the Obama administration to take action on a range of issues, get signatures, and get a response from their government. It’s an experiment in democracy, which is generating new ideas and improving on … Continue reading “Yes We Scan”
