Today is America Recycles Day, a day dedicated to encouraging Americans to recycle and buy recycled products.  To show that recycling isn’t a load of rubbish, today’s Tag It Tuesday challenge is to tag our records related to recycling. Tag our digitized recycling records here.  Here are a few of our favorites – If disco wasn’t [...]

Friday marks the annual observance of Veterans Day, a day on which we honor the millions of brave men and women who have served in the Armed Forces.  This Tag It Tuesday, in tribute to our military veterans, we’re asking you to tag records in the Online Public Access (OPA) that relate to veterans and the military.   [...]

On this day 141 years ago, the forerunner of today’s National Weather Service – the Signal Service Corps’ Division of Telegrams and Reports for the Benefit of Commerce – made its first meteorological observations and reports and the weather hasn’t been the same since. “Weather” you like singing in the rain, chasing storms, or checking the daily [...]

In a previous blog post I mentioned how veterans could acquire homesteads via bounty land warrants they received as a benefit for military service.  Since then, I’ve been thinking it would be worthwhile to offer some general advice about land records at the National Archives, and more importantly to explain the distinction between public and private [...]

We’re excited to kick off Tag It Tuesday! In this new weekly feature we’ll be highlighting content from our online catalog that we invite you to tag. Curious about what tagging means and how you can get involved? Check out our previous blog post, in which we introduced the Online Public Access catalog’s new feature [...]

This week’s post comes from guest blogger Constance Potter, who is a reference archivist at the National Archives in Research Services, Archival Operations-Washington, DC. Connie is the lead expert on reference relating to the upcoming 1940 Census release on April 2, 2012. Today we focus on the places where you can find a person in an [...]

The National Archives just joined iTunes U, a dedicated area within the iTunes Store giving users public access to thousands of free lectures, videos, books and podcasts from learning institutions all over the world.  If you already have iTunes on your iPhone, iPad, iPod, or computer, you can search for “National Archives” on iTunes U to [...]

This Sunday will mark the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.  As we remember the events of that day, the George W. Bush Presidential Library has posted more than 150 photos from their collection on Flickr.  The photos from September and October 2001 offer a glimpse into the world of President Bush [...]

The more we interact with the public, whether at national conferences or NARA-sponsored events such at the annual Genealogy Fair, the more we hear how much researchers would like to see our finding aids available online.  Well, this seems like a good opportunity to point out that two of our most popular genealogy Reference Information [...]

Do you have the opening of the 1940 Census on April 2, 2012 marked on your calendar?  We do here at the National Archives.  For past Census releases we provided access to the Census on microfilm.  For the 1940 Census we will be providing free online access.  You’ll be able to search on the internet using [...]