The Digitization Services or IDS (formerly known as the Special Media Preservation Division) is NARA’s primary source of in-house digitization and analog reformatting of motion picture film, audio, video, photographs, aerial film, textual documents, cartographic documents, microfilm, and microfiche. 2010 was a year of introspection and change for us. Inspired in part by the Open [...]

We asked our new Wikipedian in Residence, Dominic McDevitt-Parks, to tell us a little bit about himself and his passion for Wikipedia.  Welcome to the National Archives, Dominic! Tell us a little about yourself.  Where are you from?  What do you study in school? I am a history buff, a word nerd, a news junkie, [...]

Today’s post is brought to you by Constance Potter, Archivist in the Archives I Research Support Branch, and Jennifer Dryer of Archives II, who is currently cross-training at Archives I. The release of the 1940 population census schedules is approaching! It will be released digitally on April 2, 2012. You will be able to access [...]

If you are anything like me, you would love to volunteer more, but you don’t feel you have enough time to make a commitment. Luckily, these days, anyone with a computer and internet access can easily participate in online volunteer projects. An upcoming public program at the National Archives will look at three projects where [...]

Have you ever landed on a Wikipedia page containing just the beginnings of an article, waiting to be filled in with valuable content? In Wikipedia parlance, these are stubs; skeleton pages set up with the basic outline of a topic which subject matter experts can work together to build into full encyclopedia articles. We see [...]

Conventional wisdom is that the appraisal process for electronic records is the same as for paper. Richard Pearce-Moses made that statement in his 2006 Presidential Address to the joint meeting of Archivists in DC. Randall Jimerson quoted him in Archives Power. However, conventional wisdom isn’t always all we need to know. Buried under Richard’s statement [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

The National Archives’ new search interface is now available! Check out Online Public Access at www.archives.gov/research/search! The National Archives’ flagship initiative in our Open Government plan is to develop online services to meet the 21st century needs of the public. Toward that end we have revamped our website, including taking a new look at how [...]

The minutes from the meeting on November 19th are posted below. The minutes will be posted on the web after the new redesign of Archives.gov is launched next week. Handouts Agenda The Text Message — The Blog of the Textual Archives Services Division at Archives II I. Welcome Director, Access Programs Susan Cummings welcomed everyone [...]