It has been quite a week. Tuesday afternoon an earthquake rattled many of our facilities around the Northeast. Little known fault lines named Lakeside and Spotsylvania near Mineral, VA, the epicenter, made themselves known over several days with at least seven aftershocks. The Washington National Regions Records Center in Suitland, MD was the hardest hit … Continue reading Cue the Locusts!
My name is David and I am an introvert. Survey research varies but at least 25% of the population identifies itself along with me. I still remember the session at MIT where we were getting ready to take the Myers-Briggs when the instructor was explaining the Introvert/Extrovert characteristics: Are you the kind of person at … Continue reading Innies and Outies
Reading Shawn Achor’s The Happiness Advantage (“The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work”), “Find a Better Job” in the latest issue of TimeOut New York (yes, I have maintained my subscription just to keep up with life in the Big Apple!), and Glen David Gold’s novel, Carter Beats the … Continue reading Creating Some Magic
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Last Thursday, a Federal grand jury indicted Barry Landau and Jason Savedoff “…for conspiring to steal historical documents from museums in Maryland and New York, and selling them for profit.”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
This 4th of July, the National Archives celebrated the 235th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence with its traditional Fourth of July program in Washington, DC. The celebration included patriotic music, a dramatic reading of the Declaration by historical reenactors, and of course, the National Archives float in the Independence Day Parade!Historical … Continue reading Fireworks, Floats, and Food!
Having grown up on the public service side of libraries, I am always on the lookout for examples of organizations and companies who can articulate a service culture. My latest discovery is Zappos.com, founded in 1999 “…with the goal of becoming the premiere destination for online shoes.” Although I have never been a customer of … Continue reading Culture and Values
I have been fortunate to work in four institutions where the Guastavino family played a role in the construction of my buildings—first at MIT, then my library at Duke, one of my branches of the New York Public Library, and now the National Archives. Rafael Guastavino immigrated to the United States from Spain in the … Continue reading Guastavino Vaulting
