What exactly is a “defendant jacket”?  What does the charge “RLD” stand for?  How do you find the records of a defendant if he or she had an alias or was charged with multiple co-defendants? These are just some of the questions faced by archivists, researchers, and volunteers working with Fort Smith’s criminal case files [...]

Today’s post is written by Dr. Greg Bradsher and is a continuation of yesterday’s post. On October 31, 1984, Leonard retired from the National Archives and the next day began turning over to Jim Hutson copies of all the documents he had collected.  For the next fifteen months, in his 1952 DeSoto, Leonard traveled the same ground he [...]

Have you ever considered a career in archival work? This week, we’re publishing a two-part post by Dr. Greg Bradsher remembering one of NARA’s archivists. The National Archives and Records Administration has been very fortunate to have among its ranks many “giants” of the archival profession.  It has also had its share of interesting characters. Leonard [...]

Today’s post is written by Dr. Greg Bradsher. I would wager that few NARA staff members, especially those hired during the past five years, and most researchers are familiar with the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG) nor its website: www.archives.gov/iwg. The website contains a wealth of valuable information not [...]

Today’s post is written by Dr. Greg Bradsher. The National Archives holds a substantial quantity Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) records. And in the forthcoming years even more records will be accessioned.  The FBI case files contain  a variety of documentation, including FBI agent reports; teletype-messages; prosecutive summaries; accounts of interviews and physical surveillance; letters; memorandums; [...]

Today’s post is written by Dr. Greg Bradsher. Nancy Yeide, head of the Department of Curatorial Records at the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, D.C., in December 1997, began doing provenance research on the NGA’s holdings to ascertain whether any of the works of art had provenance problems.  In the wake of the revelations [...]

In 1971, the National Archives established the Center for the Documentary Study of the American Revolution through its American Revolution Bicentennial Administration (Records of the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration: RG 452), at Archives I in Washington, DC.  As one of the major Bicentennial projects, the center was a sort of “one stop” location for the [...]

This post was written by Harry B. Kidd, a volunteer at Archives II, for the volunteer newsletter, The Columns. In the spring of 1918, the German Army launched a major offensive in the hope of achieving a quick victory before the full weight of American Forces could be brought to the line.  Beginning in May [...]

Today’s post is written by Archives II volunteer Jan Hodges. Do you know what a shellback ceremony is? Chances are that unless you’re a Navy man or a relative, you probably don’t. It’s a ritual conducted aboard ship after it crosses the equator. And not just any old ceremony–one that becomes part of the sailor’s permanent record. The Reference Unit [...]

Our guest blogger today is DeAnne Blanton, reference archivist at Archives I. The Archives I Reference Section is pleased to announce our in-house digitization project in honor of the Civil War sesquicentennial.  During the course of the next five years or so, the 2,750 volumes comprising the Collected Record Books of Various Executive, Legislative, and [...]