AOTUS: Collector in Chief

Open Government Appreciations 

This week the American Society of Access Professionals (ASAP) honored the National Archives with its two highest awards. The President’s Award for Distinguished Public Service was awarded to Miriam Nisbet, Director of our Office of Government Information Services (OGIS). And the Director’s Award for Superior Public Service was awarded to the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB).  PIDB is an advisory board created by Congress to promote access to national security decisions and activities.  Our Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) Director serves as the PIDB Executive Secretary and ISOO staff support the work of the board.

Thanks to Miriam, PIDB, and the staffs of OGIS and ISOO for your excellence.

Read the full post on the AOTUS blog.

Happy Public Service Recognition Week!

Yesterday we celebrated the accomplishments of National Archives staff across the country in our annual Archivist’s Awards ceremony.

We created a little internal fanfare yesterday by recognizing staff for protecting and recovering stolen records, for outstanding service and support of our nation’s veterans, for achievement in engaging our citizens, for developing the Presidential Memorandum and Directive on Managing Government Records, for efforts to increase National Declassification Center production, to name just a few of awards tied closely to our Transformation pillars.

We also celebrated long term service milestones of 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 and 45 years!

For me, every week is Public Service Recognition Week and I take great pride every day in the work that my staff does. Each member of the National Archives staff plays a vital role in fulfilling our mission of collecting, protecting, and making access happen. Congratulations to each one of you!

Read the full post on the AOTUS blog

You Are What You Search

In early December 2009 Google announced on their blog titled “Personalized Search for Everyone” that they would be using 57 “signals” derived from your previous searching behavior in order to predict the sites you were most likely to choose in your search. Netflix, Yahoo, Facebook, and YouTube, to mention just a few, use similar predictive Internet filters based on who you are, past searching behavior, and limiting hits to what fits your profile. 

Don’t believe it? Test it yourself, as I did last week with two colleagues. Pick a topic and do a Google search. Ask a couple of other people to do the same search. Compare your results.

Eri Pariser in his book, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You, describes the result as “invisible autopropoganda-indoctrinating us with our own ideas, amplifying our desires for things that are familiar and leaving us oblivious to the dangers lurking in the dark territory of the unknown.” A space outside our own comfort zone where there is less room for those chance encounters that bring insight and learning.

Read the full post on the AOTUS blog.

George W. Bush Presidential Center Dedication

Today the National Archives and Records Administration will dedicate the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas.  The facility will open to the public on May 1.

The Bush Library is the 13^th of NARA’s federally owned Presidential libraries, whose holdings span eight decades of American history.  It also increases our presence in Texas, where we already operate the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, George H.W. Bush’s library in College Station, and our regional archives and records center in Fort Worth.

We look forward to developing partnerships with the George W. Bush Presidential Center and with SMU to present joint programming, share our expertise, draw on our holdings, and bring together SMU’s academic departments and the library. These kinds of partnerships at the 12 other Presidential libraries have enriched the learning experience for students and scholars.

The new Bush Library holds 70 million pages of textual records, 40,000 artifacts (mainly gifts to the Bushes), four million photographs, and 80 terabytes of electronic information – including 200 million emails of about five pages each, or one billion pages. 

Read the full post on the AOTUS blog.

todaysdocument:

Jackie Robinson broke the color line in Major League Baseball when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. This decision would not only integrate baseball, but would help the country work to achieve equal rights for all. Civil Rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., once commented to baseball pitcher Don Newcombe, “Don, you and Jackie will never know how easy you made my job, through what you went through on the baseball field.”

Before becoming famous, Lt. Jack R. Robinson was court-martialed at Camp Hood, Texas, because he refused to move to the back of the bus after being told to do so by a bus driver and disobeying an order from a superior officer. Robinson was acquitted of all charges and received an honorable discharge, but this was not the only experience he would have in fighting discrimination.

After retiring from baseball, Robinson turned much of his attention to civil rights issues. He wrote to several Presidents about the cause, and even attended the March on Washington.

Many of these milestone events from Robinson’s life are documented in primary sources from the National Archives.

via The Rest of 42’s Story: Jackie Robinson as Civil Rights Activist

preservearchives:

Senior paper conservator, Anne Witty, works on records from NARA’s Field Offices across the U.S.  The records may need treatment for a variety of reasons, including researcher access, exhibits and loans, or to prepare records for digitization. The Field Offices hold an amazing range of records and Anne has treated presidential pardons, Titanic records, lighthouse drawings, a Charlie Chaplin poster, and maps of the Sutter Ranch (of Gold Rush fame), just to name a few.  Check out images of a Sutter Ranch map during treatment and a few of Anne’s favorite tools.

Rapturous Research

In a recent op-ed piece by Sean Pidgeon, he defines research rapture:

“A state of enthusiasm or exaltation arising from the exhaustive study of a topic or period of history; the delightful but dangerous condition of becoming repeatedly sidetracked in following intriguing threads of information, or constantly searching for one more elusive fact.”

Pidgeon’s column triggered many rapture memories from my days as a research librarian. The opportunity and challenge of engaging in the research or faculty and students over the years has been one of the joys of my professional life. Some of my favorites: the archaeologist tracing the history of turpentine from the Middle East to Europe by analysis of Renaissance painting paint fragments; an Abigail Adams quote from a letter to her husband inscribed on the fireplace mantle in the East Room of the White House; details of Pablo Neruda’s life; details of a Congolese form of voodoo practices in Cuba; and, who said “We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunities, Yogi Berra or Pogo?

In each case, except the last, the search for an answer resulted in lots of sidetracks and lots of new related information—some for the researcher, but all for me!

Read the full post on the AOTUS blog.

todaysdocument:

Franklin Roosevelt established the Jackson Hole National Monument in Wyoming 70 years ago today on March 15, 1943.  It would later be combined with the Grand Teton National Park in 1950.

Presidential Proclamation 2578 of March 15, 1943, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt establishing Jackson Hole National Monument.: 03/15/1943

via The Nation Archives at Kansas City on Twitter

todaysdocument:

Check out the exhibit in person if you can — having stared at many of these photos on a screen for years, seeing the full size prints is a whole new experience!

npr:

(via 16 Photographs That Capture the Best and Worst of 1970s America

A new exhibit at the National Archives highlights an interesting decade — one that gave rise to the environmental movement and some awkward fashion

Photo credit: National Archives