Catalog Contributions: Celebrating the “Wisdom of the Crowd”

In 2011, we introduced the tagging feature in the National Archives Catalog as a way to invite citizens to contribute their knowledge and expertise to archival descriptions: the “Wisdom of the Crowd.” Within the first month, we celebrated more than 1,000 user-contributed tags; each added with the goal of enhancing records and helping to improve … Continue reading Catalog Contributions: Celebrating the “Wisdom of the Crowd”

Celebrating 150 Million Digital Copies in the Catalog, Part 4: Highlights from the Presidential Libraries

Thanks to the persistence and dedication of many NARA staff and the help of our partners, the number of digital copies of our records in the National Archives Catalog surpassed 150 million. Digitizing large quantities of our records is an important goal for NARA because we know that not everyone can come to our facilities … Continue reading Celebrating 150 Million Digital Copies in the Catalog, Part 4: Highlights from the Presidential Libraries

Celebrating 150 Million Digital Copies in the Catalog, Part Three

Thanks to the persistence and dedication of many NARA staff and the help of our partners, the number of digital copies of our records in the National Archives Catalog surpassed 150 million. Digitizing large quantities of our records is an important goal for NARA because we know that not everyone can come to our facilities … Continue reading Celebrating 150 Million Digital Copies in the Catalog, Part Three

Celebrating 150 Million Digital Copies in the Catalog, Part Two

In my last post, I noted that through the persistence and dedication of many NARA staff and the help of our partners, the number of digital copies of our records in the National Archives Catalog surpassed 150 million. Digitizing large quantities of our records is an important goal for NARA because we know that not … Continue reading Celebrating 150 Million Digital Copies in the Catalog, Part Two

Celebrating 150 Million Digital Copies in the Catalog

Thanks to the persistence and dedication of many NARA staff and the help of our partners, the number of digital copies of our records in the National Archives Catalog has just surpassed 150 million. Digitizing large quantities of our records is an important goal for NARA because we know that not everyone can come to … Continue reading Celebrating 150 Million Digital Copies in the Catalog

NARA Datasets on the AWS Registry of Open Data

Today, NARA released two datasets to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Registry of Open Data: the National Archives Catalog dataset and the 1940 Census dataset. The AWS Registry of Open Data is a service provided by AWS to store open, public datasets for free so that they can be accessed and analyzed on AWS. With … Continue reading NARA Datasets on the AWS Registry of Open Data

Democratizing Access to our Records

The National Archives has a big, hairy audacious strategic goal to provide public access to 500 million digital copies of our records through our online Catalog by FY24. When we first announced this goal in 2010, we had less than a million digital copies in the Catalog and getting to 500 million sounded to some … Continue reading Democratizing Access to our Records

Collaborate, Innovate, Learn

Difficult times demand innovative thinking. In March, the National Archives began closing buildings around the country in order to protect our staff and public from the pandemic. NARA staff members were plunged into a world where the work to support the mission of the agency became fully digital. In response, NARA quickly created a wide … Continue reading Collaborate, Innovate, Learn

95%: Describing the National Archives’ Holdings

The National Archives Catalog has reached a milestone: we now have 95% of our holdings completely described at the series level in our online catalog. This is a monumental achievement. Why? Because the National Archives holds over 13 billion pages of records, and we are adding hundreds of millions of pages to that total every … Continue reading 95%: Describing the National Archives’ Holdings

What’s New in the National Archives Catalog: British Photographs of World War I

As part of our efforts to digitize photographic and moving image records related to World War I and World War II, we recently digitized a series of British Photographs from World War I (1914-1918) and made them available in our online catalog. This series of photographs taken by British photographers depicts the military activities and … Continue reading What’s New in the National Archives Catalog: British Photographs of World War I