David S. Ferriero's Blog, page 10

Join us on a Presidential Libraries Road Trip!

In celebration of Presidents Day, we are featuring a series of Citizen Archivist tagging and transcription missions using Catalog records from each Presidential Library: a Presidential Libraries Road Trip! Join us online as we virtually travel the country throughout February, bringing you records from the Presidential Libraries across the National Archives. 

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Through this project, we are sharing more of the incredible resources held at each Presidential Library, highlighting records available in the Catalog, and encouraging citizen archivists to tag and transcribe these items to make them more accessible and findable online. Learn more on the Citizen Archivist dashboard. 

We first announced this project through our National Archives Catalog newsletter. Each issue of our email newsletter highlights the descriptions and digitized records available for online access, as well as tips on the Catalog’s features and functionality. The newsletter also provides updates on our crowdsourcing and citizen archivist programs, and shares stories of how online access shapes efforts in research and education.  

Previous editions of our newsletter have also featured:

World War I division records added to the Catalog and fully transcribed by citizen archivists.
More than 6,000 photographs of U.S. Marine Corps activities in World War II and Korea digitized by the Still Pictures Branch.
Spotlight on Electronic Records and the work of the Electronic Records Branch.
The digitization of General Douglas MacArthur’s Strategic World War II Maps by the Cartographic Branch.

Connecting with Customers is an important strategic goal for the National Archives. Our newsletter helps us engage with our audiences to share more about the records available at the National Archives, while encouraging citizen archivists to make these records more accessible by adding metadata through tagging, transcription, and comments. 

Every two weeks, we reach more than 160,000 registered users, researchers, and citizen archivists through our newsletter. Join us and subscribe now!

A New Path for Exploration: Record Group Explorer

NARA staff have been developing a new digital tool that you can use to explore our records. The tool draws from over 100 million digital copies in our Catalog. And we are adding more digital copies every day. This can be overwhelming, especially to new users of the Catalog. 

So we have been working to develop an interface for you to understand the scale (enormous) and organization of our holdings and to explore what we have available online (also huge, but relatively small in comparison to the total). Note that this is still under development, but we would like you to take a look at our Record Group Explorer. 

The home page is a visualization of our holdings organized by the traditional archival record group, which is a grouping of records from a major government agency, usually a bureau or independent agency.  

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You can click on any of the blue boxes, and when you do, you are provided with an overview of the scans available online within that Record Group and links that encourage further discovery.  The smaller dark blue squares indicate how much of that record group has been digitized and is available online. The goal is to help you see at a glance that even though we have so many digital copies available online, they are just the beginning point for exploration of our records. 

To provide more specific information about textual records within a Record Group that have been scanned and are available online, each Record Group page includes a progress bar.  

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We also provide paths into each Record Group by the general types of records that are available online. Each Record Group is unique, but most of them have textual records, maps and charts, photographs, others have electronic records, audio and video records.

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We made sure to let you know that we have much more work to do to make all of our records available online.  And we offer a way for you to work with us to improve the findability of our records.

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The Record Group Explorer continues to be a work in progress. Currently the tool is slow in bringing back records from the Catalog and we are working to improve performance. As we continue to collaborate, innovate and learn, your patience will be rewarded with the treasures of the National Archives.  So try it out and tell me, what do you think?

Accepting Responsibility, Working to Rebuild Your Trust

On Saturday, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) issued a public apology for having displayed an altered photograph at the National Archives Museum in Washington, DC. The public apology reads in full:

We made a mistake. 

As the National Archives of the United States, we are and have always been completely committed to preserving our archival holdings, without alteration.    

In an elevator lobby promotional display for our current exhibit on the 19 th Amendment, we obscured some words on protest signs in a photo of the 2017 Women’s March. This photo is not an archival record held by the National Archives, but one we licensed to use as a promotional graphic. Nonetheless, we were wrong to alter the image.

We have removed the current display and will replace it as soon as possible with one that uses the unaltered image.

We apologize, and will immediately start a thorough review of our exhibit policies and procedures so that this does not happen again.

Yesterday, I sent an apology to NARA staff members as well. Their commitment to integrity, transparency, our mission, and the public good is well established. I am very sorry that these attributes have been called into question in any way. 

To be clear, this decision was made without any external direction whatsoever.  

In the elevator lobby outside our Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote exhibit, we had mounted a lenticular display using an archival photograph of the 1913 suffrage march on Washington with a commercially-licensed photograph of the 2017 Women’s March. Both photographs had been taken from the same location and angle, so as the viewer moved from one position to another the images blended and changed. NARA had blurred words in four of the protest signs in the 2017 march photograph, including President Trump’s name and female anatomical references. 

We wanted to use the 2017 Women’s March image to connect the suffrage exhibit with relevant issues today. We also wanted to avoid accusations of partisanship or complaints that we displayed inappropriate language in a family-friendly Federal museum. 

With those concerns in mind, and because the image was not our archival record, but was commercially-licensed and used as a graphic component outside of the gallery space, we felt this was an acceptable and prudent choice.

However, we wrongly missed the overall implications of the alteration. Our action made it appear as if we did not understand the importance of our unique charge: as an archives, we must present materials – whether they are ours or not – without alteration; as a museum proudly celebrating the accomplishments of women, we should accurately present not silence the voices of women; and as a Federal agency serving the American public, we must incorporate non-partisanship into everything we do. 

We are now working to correct our actions as quickly and visibly as possible. 

On Saturday afternoon, we removed the lenticular display and replaced it with our apology letter. On Sunday, we placed a photograph of the 1913 rally where the lenticular display had hung and placed the apology letter prominently next to the photo. Today we added the unaltered image of the 2017 march, placing it side-by-side with one from the 1913 rally. We are having the original lenticular display re-fabricated without the alterations, and we will install it in its original location as soon as it is available. I remain proud of the Rightfully Hers exhibit and the work of the National Archives staff to address issues related to the ongoing struggles of women’s rights in this centennial year of the 19th Amendment. 

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Photograph installation in the elevator lobby outside the Rightfully Hers exhibit in the Lawrence F. O’Brien Gallery. Photo by Susana Raab, January 22, 2020.

Our credibility, so important to our mission, understandably has been questioned. We have begun to examine internal exhibit policies and processes and we will incorporate external best practices to ensure something like this never happens again. In addition to our public apology and my letter to staff yesterday, we will be apologizing to our colleagues in the archives, museum, library, education, and other fields, as well. 

As the National Archives and Records Administration, we are first and foremost a government archives. Our mission is to preserve and provide public access to Federal Government records in our custody and control. Our records allow Americans to claim their rights of citizenship, to hold their government accountable, and to understand their history so they can participate more effectively in their government. We serve millions of researchers a year at public research rooms located across the country, online, and in response to written correspondence, email, and telephone requests. Access to these records – and faith in the institution that provides them – is essential to our American democracy.  

I take full responsibility for this decision and the broader concerns it has raised. Together with NARA’s employees, I am committed to working to rebuild your trust in the National Archives and Records Administration. By continuing to serve our mission and customers with pride, integrity, and a commitment to impartiality, I pledge to restore public confidence in this great institution.

Remembering Doc Edgerton

One of the great things about growing up the libraries of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was getting to work with retired faculty. No one ever seemed to really retire at MIT! Most retained their office or lab space, continued their research, and still used the libraries. 

One of my favorites was Harold “Doc” Edgerton, professor of electrical engineering. Doc, also known as Papa Flash, transformed the stroboscope into a tool for sonar and deep-sea photography. Jacques Cousteau used his equipment in shipwreck and Loch Ness monster searches. Like many MIT faculty, Doc was a student there, getting an advanced degree in 1931 and never left.

His high-speed photography also became a new art form and his short film on stroboscopic photography won an Oscar in 1940.

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Stopping Time: The Photographs of Harold Edgerton. Le Temps Arrete: Les Photographies De Harold Edgerton. An Exhibition Organized From The Permanent Collection. International Center of Photography, New York City for the Arts America Program of the United States Information Agency. National Archives Identifier 88693888

I would frequently see Doc in the library or crossing campus. Always a smile and greeting and if you provided any kind of service for him, he would reach into his jacket pocket and extract once of his milk drop postcards as a thank you.

I remember the afternoon in January 1990 when word reached me that Doc had died suddenly at lunch at the MIT Faculty Club. It was like a member of the family passing on. And Doc was an important member of the MIT family.

To this day, I try to follow Doc’s philosophy:

“Work hard.  Tell everyone everything you know.  Close a deal with a handshake.  Have fun!”

By the Numbers 2019

[image error]National Youth Administration (NYA) Photographs showing Projects in New England and New York, 1935 – 1942. National Archives Identifier 7350922

Number of Record Group descriptions in the National Archives’ Catalog: 569*
Number of Collection descriptions in the Catalog: 4,752
Number of creating organization authority files in the Catalog: 100,714 
Number of person name authority files linked to descriptions: 23,709
Number of geographic authority files linked to descriptions: 9,574
Number of topical subject files linked to descriptions: 6,960
Number of series descriptions: 265,940
Number of file descriptions: 19,522,800
Number of digital copies attached to file descriptions: 92,982,448
Number of item descriptions: 3,941,369
Number of digital copies attached to item descriptions: 8,087,738
Number of National Archives staff who have contributed to the Catalog: 898
Average number of monthly views of NARA’s records in the Catalog: 439,867
Number of other digital platforms that provide access to NARA records: 26**
Number of NARA’s digital copies available via DPLA: 93,158,351
Average number of monthly views of NARA’s records in DPLA: 22,320
Number of NARA records available in Wikipedia articles (English): 17,785
Number of NARA records in Wikimedia Commons: 463,376
Number of NARA descriptive records in Wikidata: 403,340
Average number of monthly views of NARA’s records in Wikipedia: 128,130,774
Number of NARA digital copies available through GIPHY: 400
Number of NARA staff who have contributed to our GIPHY work: 7
Average number of monthly views of NARA’s records via GIPHY: 36,441,793

*Record Group numbers currently run through 601, but not all numbers are in use.

**Platforms such as DPLA, Wikipedia, SNAC, and others of which we are aware (not including our extensive social media channels). 

Recent events at the Innovation Hub

Since the Innovation Hub opened in July 2015, many visitors and volunteers have passed through its doors to scan documents from our holdings, attend presentations and conferences, and participate in brainstorming sessions as well as scanathons and editathons.

The Innovation Hub accomplishes an important part of NARA’s mission to make access happen through digitization, and also serves as an important event space to bring together both internal and external stakeholders for collaborative activities and cooperative learning. In 2019, the Innovation Hub hosted more than 130 events with a total in-person attendance of 2,331. 

Recently, we welcomed two student groups to the Innovation Hub who were interested in learning more about the work of the National Archives, how to conduct research, and ways to participate in scanning documents to make them more accessible online. 

[image error]Applied History students outside the National Archives Building in Washington, DC. Photo courtesy of @wshs_applied_history

Students in Brian Heintz’s Applied History class from West Springfield High School spend the school year learning about and visiting various institutions that interpret and present history. The information they learn during their visits prepares them for future internships at various institutions. During their visit to the National Archives Innovation Hub, their goals were to visit the museum side of the Archives, learn about conducting research, and scan original documents to learn about hands-on work that we do to make our records available online. During their visit, they scanned 1,627 pages of Compiled Military Service Records! These records will be available online in the National Archives Catalog in just a few weeks.

[image error]Students in the National Archives Innovation Hub. Photo by Catherine Brandsen

Additionally, the University of Maryland’s Student Archivists of Maryland, an organization of graduate students studying archival science, visited the Innovation Hub to learn more about our process for metadata collection and uploading digital files to the Catalog, while participating in a hands-on scanning event. Together they scanned 6 pension files of Buffalo Soldiers and Indian Scouts. One student even found a photo within the file! 

[image error]Photo found within pension files of Buffalo Soldiers and Indian Scouts at the National Archives Innovation Hub. Photo by Catherine Brandsen

I am proud to welcome these groups through our doors to share the important work being accomplished at the National Archives, and for the opportunity it affords to participate in conversations emphasizing the relevance of history and the historical record. Together we are raising awareness of the value of archives and archivists, and pursuing a path to elevate history to a greater role in our community and our nation.

Learn more about the Innovation Hub on our website. 

Making Access Happen: NARA’s Leadership in the Digital Decade

The history of the National Archives records our longstanding commitment to the mission of preserving and providing access to the permanent records of the federal government. However, in no decade in our history have we provided greater access than in the one that is drawing to a close this month. Together, our staff developed values to collaborate, innovate and learn. Our focus on those values has resulted in unprecedented digital access to our records.

To make digital access happen, you need digital records and we are creating them at a rate that was unthinkable just a few years ago. Thanks to new software and hardware technologies, we are able to scan, index and provide access to digital copies of our records like never before.  Our digitization partnerships have resulted in tens of millions of digital copies of our records that we are making available in our Catalog. Ten years ago, NARA had 300,000 digital copies of our records available through the Catalog. Today we have 97 million and counting.  We are working toward a goal of having 500 million digital copies available through our Catalog by FY24. After that, we are on to our first billion.

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In 2009, Making Access Happen meant that we provided descriptions of our records in our online Catalog and our digital presence was limited to our websites. Today our records are available on over 25 platforms and counting.  We started working with Wikipedia in 2011 and our collaboration has ensured that digital copies of our records are viewed over a billion times each year.  Our partnership with the Digital Public Library of America has resulted in more views of our records on their site than on our own.  Our digitization partners’ websites provided over 300 million views to our records in 2019.

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We have come a long way over the past ten years to expand digital access to our records. By using new technologies and developing open and collaborative relationships, we are providing digital copies of our records to people who may never come to a National Archives building, may never click on to archives.gov, but will see our records on social media, blogs, and websites from DPLA to GIPHY and more.  What a decade it has been! Just imagine what we will accomplish in the next one.

Remembering Cokie

Last spring, the National Archives Foundation Board voted to present the 2019 Records of Achievement Award to Cokie Roberts in recognition of her work as a journalist, political commentator, and historian.  With her untimely passing, last night’s award ceremony was, instead, a tribute program honoring her life and legacy.

Cokie dedicated her life to learning about and telling us the stories of women and their roles in our founding and in our government.  Her work extended far beyond the scope of well-known politicians and suffragists, often looking to ordinary women and their influence.  She did so much to highlight the contributions of other women, it was a privilege to honor Cokie for her many contributions at the National Archives. This past summer she graciously agreed to give the keynote at our annual Fourth of July celebration.  Her remarks brought attention to the forgotten women who helped contribute to independence and ultimately the right to vote.  In 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John Adams, urging him to “remember the ladies,” and Cokie was determined to remember them as well.

As a member of the National Archives Foundation Board, Cokie worked tirelessly on behalf of our education and outreach activities.  Her wise counsel, intelligence, wit, and passion for the role of women in our society will be missed—but never forgotten.

Over ten years together, Cokie and I often found ourselves in the Rotunda of the National Archives where the conversation turned to the Barry Faulkner depicting the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  Cokie ALWAYS bemoaned the fact that there were no women depicted.

In Cokie’s honor, last night Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, Martha Washington, and Eliza Hamilton joined the ranks through the magic of projection technology.  The National Archives Foundation commissioned Port Townsend (WA) artist Samara King to bring equality to the murals for the evening.

Cokie would have loved it!

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Digital Preservation Framework Released for Public Comment

Today NARA is releasing the entirety of our digital preservation framework for public comment. This digital preservation framework consists of our approach to determining risks faced by electronic files, and our plans for preserving different types of file formats. The public is encouraged to join the discussion, September 16 through November 1, 2019, on GitHub.

[image error] Photograph of World’s First Computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator. National Archives Identifier 594262

The National Archives 2018–2022 Strategic Plan embraces a vision that ensures ongoing access to extraordinary volumes of government informa­tion to bring greater meaning to the American experience. Digital preservation is critical to this work, as evidenced by the June 2019 direction (M-19-21, Transition to Electronic Records) to Federal agencies to transition business processes and record keeping to a fully electronic environment and to end the National Archives’ acceptance of paper records by December 31, 2022.

We’re in the process of shifting the entire government off of paper and to all electronic record-keeping, and we play a major role in helping the agencies get to that point. Our new strategic plan is the roadmap; by putting records management and digital preservation at the forefront of our priorities, we will help drive greater efficiency and effectiveness while making the Federal government more responsive to the American people. 

Our digital preservation subject matter experts, led by Director of Digital Preservation Leslie Johnston, have been hard at work to prepare the National Archives for this change. They have formalized a set of documents that describe how we identify risks to digital files and prioritize them for action, and created specific plans for the preservation of these many file formats.

The release of the digital preservation framework allows NARA staff, our agency stakeholders, the public, and experts in the archival and preservation fields to weigh in and assist us in creating the standard for digital preservation in the Federal government. We are also ensuring that our process for identifying and mitigating risk in the electronic records that we preserve and make accessible is as transparent as possible.

The documents are available at:  https://github.com/usnationalarchives/digital-preservation

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Please use the Issues feature to leave comments or questions, or to start a discussion. The matrix and plans will be open for comment until November 1, 2019. After that time, National Archives staff will take all the feedback and update the matrix and plans, incorporating the comments. Then final versions will be publicly released, and updated on an ongoing basis in response to changing risks and new technologies and formats.

Truman Library Ground-breaking Ceremony

The Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence, MO, is undergoing a year-long renovation that will result in a new Truman permanent exhibition, new amenities for visitors, and enhanced educational and community programming.

Yesterday, I joined Missouri Governor Mike Parson, Missouri State Senator John Rizzo, Clifton Truman Daniel (President Truman’s oldest grandson), and Library Director Kurt Graham for a ceremonial ground-breaking to mark the beginning of this major renovation and expansion project.

[image error]Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero speaks at the ground-breaking ceremony for the Harry S. Truman Library’s renovation. (Courtesy photo by Lacey Helmig, Truman Library Institute)

64 years ago, on the 8th of May in 1955, Harry S. Truman himself stuck a shovel in the ground here to launch the construction of this, our third Presidential Library in the National Archives family of presidential libraries.

When Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the first of these libraries in Hyde Park, New York, he articulated a vision for these institutions that very much guides our work to this day. He said:

“It seems to me that the dedication of a library is in itself an act of faith. To bring together the records of the past and to house them in buildings where they will be preserved for the use of men and women in the future, a Nation must believe in three things. It must believe in the past. It must believe in the future. And it must, above all, believe in the capacity of its own people so to learn from the past that they can gain in judgment in creating their own future.”   

That belief in the capacity of our people to learn from the past is what drives us in our work.  At a time when studies show us that 60% of U.S. citizens would flunk the U.S. citizenship test, that 25% of Americans don’t know that Freedom of Speech is protected under the First Amendment, fewer than 50% can name a single Supreme Court justice, yet 2/3 of Americans know at least one American Idol judge, and nearly 2/3 of Americans cannot name all three branches of government, yet 3 out of 4 can name all three Stooges—at a time like this the work of the Presidential Libraries is critical to the future of our democracy.

This library has led the way in using the records of this president’s administration to teach students how our government works. The White House Decision Center, pioneered here and now standard in other Presidential Libraries, provides an experiential and collaborative learning experience for sixth through 12 graders. Students assume the roles of President Truman’s cabinet members, have access to all the intelligence that the cabinet did through facsimiles from our records, and deal with the real issues before the President during his administration—ending the war with Japan, addressing postwar Civil Rights in the Armed Forces, reacting to the Soviet blockade of Berlin, and responding to the Communist invasion of South Korea.

Students learn how their government works, the three branches of government, checks and balances, rights and responsibilities.  

I am extremely proud of our work here and am grateful to the Truman Institute Board and staff, my staff, and the many generous donors to this renovation project. And I think Harry S. Truman would be very pleased with our efforts. In a 1959 letter to a donor he said:

“It is my ambition to make the Library a center for the study of the Presidency…This Republic of ours is unique in the history of government and if the young people coming along in the future generations do not understand it and appreciate what they have, it will go the way of the Judges of Israel, the City State of Greece, the Great Roman Republic and the Dutch Republic.”

Thank you, Mr. President!

[image error]Harry S. Truman at Groundbreaking for Truman Library, 5/8/1955. National Archives Identifier 6789287