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 will be answered.
Take a look at this fun video to get an idea as to what kinds of questions we can help you answer on Ask Archivists Day:
(Video courtesy of http://askarchivists.wordpress.com/ and Arkivformidling)
To get in on the action, start following @AskArchivists on Twitter, and on June 9th, include the #AskArchivists hashtag in your tweet. Questions can be directed to an archives in particular, or can be generally posed to anyone participating. The @USNatArchives will be fielding questions for the National Archives, but there will also be individual employees ready to help you find anything and everything you ever wanted to know about archives. We hope you join us on June 9th!
What medium can the non-twits use?
Hi Harvey,
This is an event hosted on Twitter, but if you don’t want to sign up for an account, you can post your questions on our Research at the National Archives Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/researchatusnationalarchives) or on our NARAtions post. We’ll then tweet those questions using the hashtag. You can also just follow along with the conversation on June 9th by going to Twitter and searching for #AskArchivists.
Thanks for the question!
Mary
What is the best way to resolve a complaint on an order? I’ve tried the contact form on the NARA website. I got a response to that, but a phone message I left 5/24 to get a question answered about the resolution to the problem hasn’t been returned. I’ve been charged for the order and NARA sent someone else’s order.
Hi Jill,
We are sorry to hear you there is a problem with your order. If you could please send an email to inquire@nara.gov with your order details, we will look into this right away for you.
Thank you,
Meredith (admin)
FYI-I sent the email with details late Friday
In 1971 I bought a book “The Vicar of Wakefield” with a print date of 1762 or 1792 at the front and my youngest daugther grabbed it off the shelf and I didn’t know at the time the pages were so fragile and she managed to destroy the first few pages – does it still have any value? I read in today’s paper about a 500 yr old book in Utah with 2/3’s of the pages missing and still worth approx $35,000 while my book only has the first few pages missing.
Hi Mikki,
Unfortunately the National Archives can not appraise the book you are referring to. Most institutions and archives have very distinct appraisal policies, and suggest you get an appraisal from an independent book dealer. To learn more about the appraisal policy at the National Archives, take a look here:
http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/initiatives/appraisal.html
Mary (admin)