Are you planning to attend the National Archives’ 6th annual Genealogy Fair? If so, we hope you’ll come visit us at our exhibit tables. NARA’s new Open Government Plan (PDF) highlights how crucial social media is to opening up the Archives and establishes the redesign of Archives.gov as NARA’s “flagship initiative.” Stop by, bring us [...]

Immigration records at the National Archives contain more than just information about passengers traveling into the United States from foreign ports.  Quite often they also include accompanying lists of crewmen, both American and foreign-born, who worked on the vessels.  These lists exist because of an early 19th-century law that required the masters of American vessels [...]

As part of the Open Government initiative, NARA recently released six datasets available for the first time as raw data in XML format.  The datasets are: three editions (2007, 2008, and 2009) of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) archival descriptions from the Archival Research Catalog (ARC) organization descriptions from the Archival Research Catalog (ARC) [...]

American citizens have always had the right under the U.S. Constitution to petition Congress directly to redress specific grievances or recoup financial losses resulting from government actions (such as private property damaged by the Union Army during the Civil War).  In the 19th century, Americans commonly exercised this right, sending hundreds of thousands of private claims to [...]

Most people have a relative or ancestor who either served in the military or fought during a specific war.  Many researchers are unaware, however, that a significant distinction exists between volunteer soldiers and Regular soldiers, and that the two types of service are documented differently.  Volunteers (citizen soldiers) were enlisted to serve during specific wars [...]

We’ve loved reading your suggestions and comments about sharing NARA’s holdings on Flickr, and it’s been interesting to see which images people are marking as favorites. All of this got us wondering about which records NARA insiders are particularly fond of, so we asked a few of our experienced colleagues for their picks. This week’s [...]

We’ve loved reading your suggestions and comments about sharing NARA’s holdings on Flickr, and it’s been interesting to see which images people are marking as favorites. All of this got us wondering about which records NARA insiders are particularly fond of, so we asked a few of our experienced colleagues for their picks. This week’s [...]

Customs records at the National Archives often provide interesting glimpses of personal information about our seafaring ancestors.  The occupational hazards of the maritime trade after the Revolutionary War, especially the threat of Impressment by the British, caused many American sailors to purchase seamen’s protection certificates, such as the one pictured here that was issued to [...]

There’s no question- the National Archives holds a LOT of stuff. That breadth can be a challenge to explain to new researchers and casual website visitors, whose understanding of NARA collections may be as broad as “all the records made in the U.S.” or as dismissive as “boxes and boxes of boring government paperwork.” One [...]

This week’s highlighted question comes from Dan in NARA’s Motion Pictures (NWCS-M) department. The unit has been looking for some time at new models for delivery of NARA’s film, video and audio holdings as it struggles with keeping the aging analog reference collection alive and well. Given limited resources, the problem requires a multi-faceted solution, [...]