The National Archives will be here to answer all your archival questions on June 9th!  Known as Ask Archivists Day, this worldwide event on Twitter will bring together the people who collect, care for, and research archival records in one space where questions from general research practices to whether a repository has your ancestor’s information [...]

Being a journalist in this digital and new media age presents challenges and frustrations of tracking down and accessing Federal, State, and Local government information needed to produce responsible and accurate news products. Read today’s blog for an invitation to a free conference co-sponsored by NARA and Duke University on April 12, focusing on ways that journalists and researchers may better discover, access, and use digital government information.

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 [...]

Ever wonder what exciting new projects the many employees at NARA are working on? The “What are You Working On?” blog feature aims to introduce a variety of NARA employees and highlight some of the exciting projects we are working on around the agency. Check for this blog series on Wednesdays! This week, we introduce [...]

On December 12, 1942, 2nd Lt. Jack E. Williams and his crew were flying over the coast of France when, according to his report, “We hit the ground; that is, made a crash landing, at 12:40, after having been violently attacked by fighters.” The actions of Williams and his crewmates following the crash are documented [...]

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 [...]

The minutes from the Researcher Users’ Group meeting on May 21st (PDF) are now available on the Archives.gov page for the Researcher Users Group at the National Archives in the Washington, DC Area. Please join us for the next meeting on Friday, June 25th, 2010 at Archives I in Washington, DC (room G-24). What topics would [...]

We’re launching a public wiki pilot project that will allow researchers, historians, archivists, and citizen archivists to create pages on records or themes. We need your ideas and enthusiasm to make the wiki a success.  Please join us for the second planning meeting at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, on Wednesday, May 19th from [...]

The following is a guest blog from Diane Dimkoff, director of the Customer Services Division. Most Union Army soldiers, their widows, or minor children applied for a pension. In rare cases, a dependent father or mother applied for a pension. The pension application file will often contain a statement of service prepared by the Adjutant [...]

Recently on NARAtions we heard from researchers who expressed concerns about the digitized records available on the web sites of NARA’s digitization partners.  We shared these concerns with NARA’s Access Programs office, NARA’s Digital Strategies and Services Staff, and with our digitization partners and we would like to respond to these concerns here on NARAtions. Since 2007 [...]