For today’s post we are thrilled to open our blog space to NARA’s Wikipedian-in-Residence, Dominic McDevitt-Parks. Everyone knows about Wikipedia (though there is certainly a lot of room for clarification of how it works in practice and why it is valuable for public history), so for this first post, I want to spotlight Wikisource, a [...]

Today’s post is the first in an occasional series where we will highlight some of the work of our volunteers. Janet Hodges is a volunteer with the Volunteer Office at the National Archives at College Park.  First, this isn’t about genealogy; I don’t like genealogy.  I leave that exercise to my daughter who enjoys spending [...]

Today I had the pleasure of attending a program in the National Archives’ William G. McGowan Theater called Are You In? Citizen Archivists, Crowdsourcing and Open Government that outlined some great projects that involve the public with making records available online. AOTUS Ferriero opened the program with remarks that described how President Obama’s Open Government mandate of December 2009 [...]

A couple of weeks ago I overheard a converstation between some colleagues discussing OPA.  “Try finding it in OPA,” one said.  They went on to discuss OPA functionality and benefits and use.  I assumed OPA was one of those things above my pay-grade about which I did not need to know.  As it turns out, [...]

“What records do you have here?” is a common question we are asked everyday at Archives I.  This post — Part 2 of a 3-part series — provides a brief description of the Navy/maritime records one can find at our facility in Washington, DC.  Part 1, Army [records at AI], was posted earlier, while Part 3, [...]

Today’s post is written by archivist David Langbart who works primarily with diplomatic records. Researchers who use Department of State records may be interested to know a bit more about the types of documents used by Foreign Service Posts to communicate with the Department of State. This is the second in a series of postings [...]

We want to hear from our researchers!  Here’s your chance to tell us what record groups you would like to see us working on…if you were in charge! In the last few years, the archivists working in the Textual Archives Services Division at Archives II  have been involved in several large-scale processing projects.  Archivists working with [...]

Today’s post is written by Dawn Sherman-Fells, a processing archivist who works with civilian textual records. Are you one of the many who believe that FOIA is truly a “four letter word”?  Understanding the Freedom of Information Act can be daunting, frustrating – intimidating, even.  Here I will share a few tips that will hopefully facilitate a better understanding [...]

Today’s post is written by Lloyd Beers, a processing archivist who works with U.S. Navy records. Wartime has many faces and all of them are revealed in the records held by the National Archives and Records Administration.  The April 17, 1944 issue of Life magazine featured a more relaxed face with an article picturing U.S. [...]

Our pals over at Prologue:  Pieces of History have “Facial Hair Friday;”  here at The Text Message, we give you “Beauty Queen Monday.”  The document featured in today’s post is from the January – February 1960 issue of “The Shield,” an employee newsletter published by the International Cooperation Administration (ICA).  You can find issues of  [...]