Have you marked your calendar to join us for the next DC-area Researchers Group meeting on Friday, February 18th?  We will meet at 1 PM in room G-24 of the National Archives Building in Washington, DC. The agenda includes: 1. A discussion of NARA’s Transformation Plan (read more on the Archivist’s blog) 2. An update [...]

As a way to wrap up the discussion about records relating to military service in the 20th century, it would be a good idea to check out the electronic records available on NARA’s Access to Archival Databases (AAD) . AAD is an online resource available on the NARA web site at http://aad.archives.gov/aad/ and contains a [...]

If you live in Washington, DC, or your ancestors did, or you are just interested in DC history, you might want to take a look at the DC Building Permits. Aside from using them to find out when a house was built or remodeled, you can also find individuals by name. If your ancestors owned [...]

As I’ve been reviewing pertinent records over the past several weeks relating to 20th-century military service, it’s finally time to say a few words about those that document the Vietnam War.  Instead of focusing on any one specific series, a general overview seems to offer the best approach to highlight these records, especially since they have [...]

Online Public Access (OPA) launched to the public on December 27th. What is Online Public Access? It’s the public search and display for online access to our records or information about our records. What does it contain? OPA contains all of the data and most functionality from the Archival Research Catalog (ARC), all web pages [...]

While World War II usually dominates attention as the largest and most important U.S. war of the 20th century, let’s also consider that perennially “forgotten” conflict of the early 1950s, the Korean War.  The participation of U.S. military units in the Korean War is also well documented in Record Group 407, Records of the Adjutant General’s [...]

Have you ever looked at a pension index, only to be confused because it didn’t make sense? Or frustrated because you couldn’t read the numbers? It’s probably happened to most of us, at one time or another. Researchers normally start with T288, General Index to Pension Files, 1861-1934, or T289, Organization Index to Pension Files [...]

Today I want to talk about a type of Post Office Department record that most people probably haven’t considered – Letters Sent by the Postmaster General, 1789-1836. As the series title implies, these are letters that were sent by the Postmaster General. They deal with a lot of different types of activity – the establishment [...]

Genealogists, you love census records. I would easily nominate you as their No. 1 fan! Census records are rock stars for those who love to research family history. Have you ever wondered what it will be like to research the 2010 Census records in the future? The decisions about what is permanently kept are being [...]

We posted the first version of our social media strategy today on Archives.gov. Our overall approach is to engage our staff, the government community, and researchers and citizen archivists so we can be a more open agency while accomplish NARA’s mission more effectively. We express our core values and strategies for social media in three [...]