Last Friday, I stepped aboard the U.S.S. Constitution in the Charlestown Navy Yard of Boston Harbor. I joined Commander Timothy M. Cooper, his crew, and 150 members of the Wounded Warrior Project for an underway commemoration of the Battle of Midway. The ship honored injured service members from Operation Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom and … Continue reading Huzzah! Aboard the U.S.S. Constitution
The National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis is the nation's depository for military personnel records. Within these records are the files of "Persons of Exceptional Prominence" including: Spiro Agnew, Desi Arnaz, Beatrice Arthur, Joe Louis, Humphrey Bogart, John William Coltrane, John Foster Dulles, Marvin Gaye, Theodore S. Geisel (AKA "Dr. Seuss"), Charles A. Lindbergh, … Continue reading Stars and Heroes Shine in our Military Personnel Records
Everyone brings their special dish to a potluck. It's what makes a potluck so terrific. We make dishes we know well and are likely to be enjoyed by the crowd. My signature potluck dish is a killer potato salad! Potlucks bring together the culinary expertise of the group in the same way that crowdsourcing leverages … Continue reading Aristotle and Potlucks
At the National Archives and Records Administration, we care for our nation's most beloved documents. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights are our most well known national treasures, but in the stacks there are many others, some of them not yet discovered. At a researcher meeting … Continue reading Citizen Archivist Discovers National Treasure in the Stacks
In our new exhibit, "Discovering the Civil War," you can examine the hospital muster roll card of Christianna Batts, who was one of at least 2,000 African American women who worked in U.S. hospitals. Identified on the record as an "adult female contraband," she was most likely a runaway slave seeking safety behind Union lines. … Continue reading Discover the Civil War
If you're reading this, the following statistic from a recent Pew Internet report applies to you: Fully 82% of internet users (representing 61% of all American adults) looked for information or completed a transaction on a government website in the previous twelve months. It probably doesn't surprise you that increasingly Americans are relying on the … Continue reading Redefining Transparency in a Digital Age
One of my favorite strategic planning quotes is from Wayne Gretzky. He said, "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been." A recent Morgan Stanley report on Internet trends, gives us a lot of data on where the puck will be and the direction in which we should … Continue reading The Future is in the Palm of our Hands
At the National Archives and Records Administration, our unique role as the nation's records keeper is critical to the success of the President's open government initiative. Our work serves American democracy by safeguarding and preserving the records of our Government, ensuring that the people can discover, use, and learn from this documentary heritage. I think … Continue reading Pork and Fort Sumter: New Ways of Relating to our Documents
I have said it before in a number of venues and I will say it again here, records management is the backbone of Open Government. Without effective records management by all Federal agencies, the long-term success of the Open Government Initiative, not to mention the preservation and access of the permanently valuable records of the … Continue reading The Importance of Being Earnest (About Records Management)
Have you heard the news? This week, the Library of Congress announced that they are acquiring the digital archive of public tweets. On April 14, @librarycongress tweeted, "Library to acquire ENTIRE Twitter archives -- All public tweets, ever, since March 2006!" Congratulations, Library of Congress. In the world of electronic records, this is a historic … Continue reading Tweets: What We Might Learn From Mundane Details.
