Many of our NARA colleagues are historians and researchers themselves. In this post, written by Lopez Matthews, we have the opportunity to learn about a few current research projects our staff members are undertaking. If you’d like more information on any of these projects, leave a note in the comments and we’ll make sure the [...]

Today’s post is written by Tom McAnear, a processing archivist in College Park. Tom is participating in the Archival Development Program, an in-house multi-year training course for all of NARA’s archivists. As part of my Archival Development Program (ADP) training I recently completed a 30-day rotation in June at the National Collection of Aerial Photography [...]

Today’s post is written by Anwar Thomas, an archives technician at Archives II. Processing and consolidating the Navy Deck Logs in RG 24 Records of the Bureau of Naval Personnel was an interesting project in my large criteria of archival experience.  These logs are filled with many interesting hidden facts and details concerning important events [...]

The most asked question this weekend will be “where were you?”  I was living in Massachusetts and on my way to the doctor.  The news on the radio said that something, probably a small plane, had hit the World Trade Center.  By the time my appointment was over all hell had broken loose.  The odd [...]

This post was written by Katy Berube, a student intern working in civilian processing.  It is a follow-up to the post A few good lawmen.  Documentation for this post can be found in the series “Appointment Files for Judicial Districts, 1853-1905.” As guns unloaded into British subject and cattle investor, John H. Tunstall, in the [...]

Today’s post is written by Denise Henderson. A few months ago, I was asked to locate a record about Pat Garrett, the famous sheriff who killed Billy the Kid in 1881 when cowboys and cattle thieves made the West wild and dangerous and a place in serious need of law enforcement.  Understanding the index to, [...]

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 [...]

This post looks at an unusual find in the Secretary of the Commission of Fine Arts’ papers.