The 1950 Census is Here!

At midnight, the National Archives launched the 1950 Census website.  Staff from across the agency have been working over the past decade to prepare the records and provide them to you.  I am very proud of how their work has fulfilled our mission to make access happen.  NARA and Amazon Web Services experts working together … Continue reading The 1950 Census is Here!

By the Numbers: 2010-2022

Numbers never tell the whole story, but they do provide insights that are useful for understanding the scope and impact of our work. Here are some of the numbers we have tracked that indicate how we have grown to make access happen, connect with customers, and maximize our value to the nation from 2010 to … Continue reading By the Numbers: 2010-2022

Countdown to the 1950 Census!

The clock is ticking down to the April 1, 2022 launch of the 1950 Census and NARA staff have been buzzing with activity in preparation for the date. The Big Count National Archives Identifier 178688266, p. 15 The data for each Census is restricted for 72 years, and the earliest it may be made available … Continue reading Countdown to the 1950 Census!

Meeting You Where You Are

Over the years, NARA’s GIPHY Channel has been surprisingly popular with the public. We first launched our channel on GIPHY in 2016, not knowing if the public would be interested in this way of sharing our records. We quickly learned that we were on to something when we received nearly 32 million views that year. By … Continue reading Meeting You Where You Are

Consistently Customer Centered

The current administration has called on federal agencies to focus on transforming federal customer experience. In response, the National Archives is embedding customer experience initiatives and principles into the strategic goals for the agency. We are also developing an agency-wide customer experience program.  As exciting and energizing as our new efforts are, focusing on customer … Continue reading Consistently Customer Centered

NARA Staff Collaborate for Improved Access to the 1950 Census

An enumeration district (ED), as used by the Bureau of the Census, was an area that could be covered by a single enumerator (census taker) in one census period. Enumeration districts varied in size from several city blocks in densely populated urban areas to an entire county equivalent in sparsely populated rural areas. During the … Continue reading NARA Staff Collaborate for Improved Access to the 1950 Census

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

Exploring the Future Together

The University Libraries at Virginia Tech (VT) and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), are working on a collaborative planning project, the ultimate goal of which is to ensure future access to the massive and ever-growing collection of government records in NARA’s digital Catalog.  A planning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has … Continue reading Exploring the Future Together

By the Numbers 2020

Class in reconnaissance, Group #1, showing calibration of hands and field glasses for use in rapid calculation of firing data (names in caption). Le Valdahon, Doubs, France National Archives Identifier: 86708077 FY2019 FY2020 Number of Record Group descriptions in the National Archives Catalog569*576*Number of Collection descriptions in the Catalog4,7524,764Number of creating organization authority files in … Continue reading By the Numbers 2020

Happy Birthday, Wikipedia!

Today is a celebration of the creation of the world's largest online encyclopedia and the radical idea that information can be created by and open to everyone. This concept resonates with our work at the National Archives, where we strive to support open government values of transparency, collaboration and participation. We believe in government that … Continue reading Happy Birthday, Wikipedia!