I enjoyed speaking with federal records managers on Wednesday at the National Archives’ Records Administration Conference (RACO). The records managers’ role in government is an essential part of our mission of preserving the records of the past and the present for study and use in the future. When I spoke to this same group last … Continue reading RACO and The Archivist Achievement Awards
According to Alexa.com, the internet traffic ranking company, there are only six websites that internet users worldwide visit more often than Wikipedia: Google, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo!, Blogger.com, and Baidu.com (the leading Chinese language search engine). In the States, it ranks sixth behind Amazon.com. Over the past few years, the National Archives has worked with many … Continue reading GLAMorous
At the National Archives, we’re always trying to think of new ways to make our historical records more accessible to the public. We have only a small fraction of our 10 billion records online, so it’s clear we’ve got to get creative. It’s vital that we learn how other institutions address this challenge. One approach … Continue reading Crowdsourcing and Citizen Archivist Program
Charles O. Rossotti was the Internal Revenue Commissioner from 1997 to 2002. In his book, Many Unhappy Returns, he tells the story of “one man’s quest to turn around the most unpopular organization in America.” I’m always interested in reports of “lessons learned” and this is one of the best, especially as I reflect on … Continue reading NARA and the IRS
In my 40 years on University campuses, I have participated in many commencement exercises and sat through too many commencement addresses! The best ones are brief, inspiring, and leave you something to think about. On Friday I heard such a speech. I was honored to be part of the exercises at Long Island University. The … Continue reading Commencement Season
Artwork, silver, books, religious objects, antiquities, archival documents, and carvings. These are just a few of the types of cultural property that were stolen, looted, seized, forcibly sold, or otherwise lost to the Nazis beginning in the 1930s and continuing through World War II. After the war, documents about this cultural property were scattered across … Continue reading Together, We Can Turn Lost into Found
In a February blog post I cited Wayne Gretzky as a strategic thinker—skating to where he thought the puck would be. On Friday night, a young emerging forward on the San Jose Sharks squad, Benn Ferriero, delivered an equally great after game quote. In the first game of the Western Conference Semifinal Series against the … Continue reading More Hockey Wisdom
This week I was in Kansas City visiting two of our three facilities in the area. The limestone caves at Lenexa hold both temporary and permanent records of Federal agencies in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska including the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Veterans Affairs. In addition, the growing collection of records of … Continue reading The One Who Got Away
Iodite of potassium, sulphate of iron, nitrate of silver, rice starch, ferro cyanite of potassium, and even lemon juice. These are some of the ingredients necessary to reproduce the secret writing techniques described in the six documents declassified by the CIA last week as part of the work of the National Declassification Center (NDC). The … Continue reading Spies and Secret Writing
On Sunday, I was honored to provide the keynote address for the Next Century Convocation at MIT, the institution which launched my career and shaped my worldview. I shared my thoughts on MIT’s striking founding vision and how pervasive its influence has been over the last 150 years, even in unexpected places. MIT's motto is … Continue reading Mens et Manus: Reaching for the Future
