David S. Ferriero's Blog, page 33

Thanks

This week we had an agency wide Public Employee Service Recognition webinar.  Staff gathered virtually across the country to celebrate their fellow employees, especially those who have provided 35, 40, and 45+ years of Federal Service.

I am very proud of the dedicated folks I work with and although it wasn’t as good as being in all 44 facilities at once, it was terrific to hear the hooting and hollering as the names were read.

Image courtesy of alexking.org

National Archives staff are skilled public servants who help people connect with the records they need—veterans, genealogists, students, scholars, and those just curious about our history.  And this staff helps our fellow Federal employees in managing and accessing their own records and provides service to the Hill for access to Congressional Records on our shelves.

Five people who together have given the American people 237 years of service were honored:

Charles Johnson, a Finding Aids Specialist in Washington, DC has served 45 years.
Ray Hess, an Archives Technician in the National Declassification Center in College Park, MD, has served 45 years.
Kenneth Casey, a Transfer and Disposal Specialist at the Federal Records Center in Chicago, IL, has served 45 years.
Brenda Bernard, Administrative Officer in the Federal Records Center in Philadelphia, PA, has served 46

… [ Read all ]

Join the Chorus

Until fairly recently, social media has been seen as experimental and outside the realm of the essential work of our agency. Today that is simply no longer the case.  Smart use of social media is now mission-critical to our agency. As the agency charged with advising Federal Agencies and the White House on the records implications of the technologies they are using, we must be out in front in our own use of these technologies.  And all Federal Agencies and the White House are deep into the social media experience.  And using social media channels in our own work, we can work more collaboratively, provide greater transparency for each other and the public, and invite the public to participate in our efforts.

We should understand the sea change that technology has brought to the American public and people around the world. According to a Pew report, 66% of online adults use social media platforms. By effectively engaging with social media tools, we are building and maintaining relevance with the public.

Many staff members at the National Archives have embraced social media–our communications staff is facile, many staff who interact with our user communities have created blogs and are tweeting, and all of our Presidential Libraries have both feet in the social media world.  This is not a passing fad or a frivolous use of technology. … [ Read all ]

1940 Census Release

On April 1, 1940 over 120,000 census takers fanned out across the United States to begin conducting the 1940 census. Over the next several weeks they would enumerate over 131,000,000 residents of the country from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to families living in the remotest areas of the nation.

Genealogists, social scientists, historians, and others, as well as the staff here at the National Archives, are eagerly awaiting the opportunity to discover what life was like as the country neared the end of the Great Depression. The 1940 census reflects the previous decade with questions intended to track migration and employment during the Depression. For the first time the Bureau of the Census employed sampling when conducting the census. Approximately five percent of the population was asked supplemental questions including ones about military service, the birthplace of parents, and, for women, marital status and the number of children.

This morning, I was pleased to co-host the National Archives' ceremony along with my friend, Robert Groves, Director of the Census Bureau. Together, we officially opened the 1940 census to the public. For the first time, we are releasing the 3.8 million pages of the census online. This is the largest online release of a single series of digitized records by the National Archives. In keeping with our mission to provide free access to the holdings of… [ Read all ]

A New Presidential Library

On Tuesday of this week I had a chance to visit the construction site of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum on the Southern Methodist University campus in Dallas, Texas.  Some 700 workers were onsite at the time, inside and outside, to bring this latest addition to the National Archives in on schedule in April 2013.  This facility will house more than 70 million pages of paper documents, 43,000 artifacts (primarily foreign and domestic gifts to the President and First Lady) and an immense audiovisual archive including more than 4 million photographs.

Of special significance is that digital component of the library which includes some 210 million email messages!  We began collecting email during the Ronald Reagan administration and have about 8 million from that administration and 20 million from the William Clinton White House.

The new Library and Museum was designed by architect Robert Stern and the landscaping designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh and the intended interplay between inside and outside spaces is truly magnificent.  The acreage will include a variety of Texas specific landscapes and a cistern currently under construction will collect rainwater for natural irrigation of the space.

More detail is available at www.georgewbushlibrary.gov

View the live webcam to monitor construction activity at www.manhattanconstructiongroup.com/manhattan-construction/projects/webcams/george-w-bush-presidential-center

Nazi Looting Documentation

In Dallas this week I accepted two photo albums documenting artwork and furniture stolen by German troops in Paris.  The albums were created under Hermann Goering's direction by Alfred Rosenberg who led the Nazi agency, Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) and served as pick lists for Adolph Hitler.  Hitler intended to create a museum in Austria.

39 of the albums were discovered in May 1945 at Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany and served as evidence in the Nuremberg Trials.  The trial's documentation is in the custody of the National Archives (www.archives.gov/research/holocaust).  The albums are meticulous records indicating where they were stolen—invaluable provenance documentation for restitution claims.

Through the work of Robert Edsel and the Monuments Men Foundation, four more albums have been discovered and added to the collection.  The albums were taken as souvenirs by American troops when they left Germany and discovered after the deaths of the soldiers.

The Monuments Men Foundation, recipient of the National Humanities Medal in November 2007, was established to carry on the mission of the original monuments men—museum directors, curators, art historians and educators, architects, artists, and librarians who volunteered "to protect the great cultural treasures of western civilization from the destruction of war and theft by Adolph Hitler and the Nazis."  Robert Edsel's tireless efforts have not only celebrated the accomplishments of the original group but… [ Read all ]

Digital Hoarding

Writing in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, Melinda Beck quotes Kit Anderson, past president of the Institute for Challenging Disorganization (check out their website!  www.nsgcd.org):  "Digital clutter doesn't beget mice or interfere with walking around the house.  But it's more insidious because no one else is going to insist that you get help."

It is an article which struck a chord with me as we encourage staff here at the National Archives to take a look at the digital files they are maintaining.  But it is a message for non-work digital clutter also.

"Hoarding is officially considered a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but some hoarders also suffer from attention-deficit-hyperactive disorder.  Some digital hoarders are driven perfectionists who don't know when to stop researching or collecting."  Ouch!

Some tips offered in the article:

 Practice 'zero email.'  Clear your inbox every day.
Declare 'email bankruptcy.'  Delete every unread message and alert your 10 best friends and colleagues to resend crucial messages.  NARA staff—not advised!
Unsubscribe to every newsletter and mailing list not needed.
Make use of your spam filter

Beck also reports that people typically use only about 20% of what they save.  So…how are you doing?  Where on the digital hoarding scale do you fall?

Thank You, Irma Johnson

Many, many years ago when I was shelving books in the MIT Humanities Library I was fortunate to have the benefit of advice from several members of the staff who took an interest in my "career."  One of them was the Science Librarian, Irma Johnson.  I got to know Irma well because every summer she would want some portion of her collection shifted to better serve her clientele—and I did the shifting.  It was an interesting way to learn the literature of the sciences!

That was the beginning of a 31-year stay in the MIT Libraries during which time I became Irma's boss and my real learning from her began.  She had her finger on the pulse of the needs of her users—mathematicians are heavily dependent upon the literature of the past, similar to historians; materials science was a discipline invented at MIT and heavily dependent on the literatures of many sciences; demanding chemists need access to their literature 24×7; the food and nutrition folks were doing interesting work with freeze-drying that might have library preservation applications, etc.  Irma clearly shaped my curiosity about user behavior and my lifelong perspective of looking at everything we do from the user's viewpoint.

I kept in touch with Irma throughout my career each time thanking her for those early lessons.  She passed away in 2010 at the age… [ Read all ]

Happy Sunshine Week!

Almost 100 years ago, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote:  "Sunlight is said to be the best disinfectant.  If the broad light of day could be let in upon men's actions, it would purify them as the sun disinfects."

I like to think that we celebrate Sunshine Week every day at the National Archives.  We have a unique role, which we describe as "preserving the past to protect the future."  The beautiful sculptures designed by Robert I. Aitken and chiseled by the Piccarelli Brothers of the Bronx at the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance echo this.  "The Past" is represented by an ancient bearded man with a scroll and "The Future is a young women with a book.  She sits atop a pedestal inscribed with "The Past is Prologue."  That is the spirit which embodies the function we serve.

It also embodies the Freedom of Information Act which we celebrate this week.  FOIA was passed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on the Fourth of July in 1966.  Since its passage it has been used by scores of people to learn more about how our government works.  In 2010 alone, the government received more than 600,000 requests for records under the FOIA.  We are proud to have the original text of the FOIA as it was signed into law in 1966.  And we are especially proud to… [ Read all ]

iRevolution

The National Archives keeps looking for ways to work with other agencies to spark citizen engagement with our records.  Our most recent project is the Document Your Environment contest for students, which we co-sponsored with the Environmental Protection Agency.  We invited students aged 13 and older to explore some of the nearly 16,000 photos in the Documerica collection and create their own graphic art, poem, or multimedia video in response.  I was delighted to see the entries we received from students around the globe.  The selection process was difficult because many of the entries were so creative.

I am pleased to announce the grand prize winner of the Document Your Environment student contest: iRevolution by 24-year-old Anna Lee of San Francisco, CA.  Her work stood out because it got the message across graphically and did it in a crisp manner that I found visually appealing.

 

Original Documerica photographer Michael Philip Manheim judged the graphic arts category and selected Anna's work as a finalist.  He wrote, "There is a message that is telegraphed in this art, so it achieves the goal of dramatically bringing an environmental problem into the viewer's consciousness."  Anna was inspired by the 1972 photo titled "Children in Fort Worth Are Learning that Protecting the Environment Will Take More Than Awareness" by Documerica photographer Jim Olive, and she wrote in her… [ Read all ]

Yes We Scan Again! The Archives chats with voters on a “We the People” teleconference

On January 10th, I blogged about the “Yes We Scan” petitions proposed by Carl Malamud’s PublicResource.org on the White House’s We The People petition platform. “Yes We Scan” calls for a national strategy, and even a Federal Scanning Commission, to figure out what it would take to digitize the holdings of many federal entities, from the Library of Congress to the Government Printing Office to the Smithsonian Institution.

I have been delighted to see the many ideas discussed in response to that blogpost. I encourage you to keep them coming!

Following that initial post, I worked with the White House Director of New Media, Macon Phillips, and the Director of Online Engagement, Katelyn Sabochik, to set up a conference call, inviting those who voted for the Yes We Scan petition (about 2,500 signers total) to further discuss this important issue and hear your ideas on how to move forward.

Sitting on the call with me were Mike Wash, NARA’s CIO; Pamela Wright, our Chief Digital Access Strategist; and Jill James, our Social Media Manager.

Eighty-five people from all over the country dialed in for the call. Eighteen participants asked questions. I want to thank you for taking the time to call in and to let us know your thoughts.

The topics included questions on everything from the magnitude of the task… [ Read all ]