On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast of the United States, displacing thousands of residents and causing billions of dollars in damage. Less than a month later Hurricane Rita caused further damage when it made landfall in Texas and Louisiana.  Pictures from these storms and others are captured in over [...]

Attention smartphone users:  The National Archives has released our first mobile application called “Today’s Document,” based on the popular feature on Archives.gov. This new mobile app is an interactive gallery that allows you to explore the holdings of the US National Archives through a collection of 365 fascinating documents and photographs from throughout history.  Learn [...]

Do you like photographs of past places and times?  Do you like to take photographs yourself?  Have you ever wanted your work to be featured and sold by the National Archives?  Then we have the contest for you! The National Archives introduces our first photo contest on Challenge.gov, an innovative website where the Federal government [...]

After winning the 1860 presidential election, Abraham Lincoln left his hometown of Springfield, Illinois, on a 12-day journey to Washington. With the help of our technology research partners in Illinois, it takes just a few seconds to send huge volumes of electronic copies of his records back to Lincoln’s Presidential Library.

Today’s post comes from guest blogger Stephanie Greenhut, Education Technology Specialist with the Center for the National Archives Experience. We know! And we were happy to hear that NARA’s new DocsTeach.org prompted this tweet on October 4. It was part of the almost-immediate-feedback we received after launching the site. Additional blogs, tweets, social bookmarks, social [...]

The National Archives introduces an exciting new way to use our historic photograph collections!  History Happens Here! augments reality and combines the old with the new in the same frame, giving the viewer a unique perspective on how our country has evolved over time. For those of us who are familiar with the latest in [...]

Special acknowledgment goes to Steve Spence, Archives Specialist at the National Archives at Kansas City, for his assistance in writing this post. Bank robbers! Prohibition gangsters! Con men! Wartime spies! Your great uncle Charlie?  This week’s post features records that combine criminal activity and family history, giving genealogists access to the shady underside of their [...]

Way back in October, we announced that the National Archives was uploading several sets of our Mathew Brady photos onto Flickr.  These original sets were not in any particular order, and were just a selection of the thousands of photographs that Mathew Brady took that now live at the National Archives.  Also in that original [...]

We joined Flickr last summer as a new way to share our photos with the public. These photos are also available via our online catalog, the Archival Research Catalog (ARC). From the iconic Mathew Brady Civil War photographs to the stirring images from the Environmental Protection Agency’s DOCUMERICA endeavor in the 1970s, thousands of people [...]

This guest blog post was written by NARA Archives Specialist Jerry Simmons. Earth Day turns 40 today!  To mark this great, green event, I wanted to highlight the Environmental Protection Agency’s Project DOCUMERICA collection held in the Still Pictures branch of the National Archives at College Park.  Though none of these images depict actual Earth [...]