Today's post comes from Pamela Wright, National Archives Chief Innovation Officer. Earlier this week we posted an invitation to help transcribe records in our holdings and it has sparked some thoughtful conversations about the role of crowdsourcing at the National Archives. For this specific crowdsourcing campaign we featured several “missions” that we wanted citizen archivists … Continue reading Why do we engage Citizen Archivists?
Today's post comes from Kate Mersiovsky, National Archives Technician Since I’ve become an archives technician in the Innovation Hub Scanning Room at the National Archives, I’ve seen my fair share of interesting records. Researchers have digitized the pension of presidential widow Lucretia Garfield, the pension of Harriet Tubman, and the Supreme Court cases In Re … Continue reading Private Mohammed Kahn: Civil War Soldier
Every time I hear a story about a researcher spending money to travel to a National Archives facility only to find out the records they seek aren’t at that location, are unavailable for research, or that the reference staff are unable to assist the research in the short travel window they have available, I cringe. … Continue reading Two Steps Every Researcher Should Take
Today's post comes from Jason Clingerman, Digital Public Access Branch Chief at the National Archives. Are you looking to sharpen your research skills? We’re exploring some of the most requested records at the National Archives and how to search for them in the Catalog. Today we’ll take a closer look at the Applications for Enrollment in … Continue reading Searching the Dawes Rolls
Today’s post comes from Meredith Doviak, Community Manager for the National Archives Catalog. Meredith recently spoke to Dr. Jaime Cantrell, Visiting Assistant Professor of English at The University of Mississippi. Dr. Cantrell has introduced undergraduate students to the importance of archival research and materials by encouraging them to become citizen transcribers for the National Archives … Continue reading Teaching from the Archives
You might already know that jelly beans were a staple in Cabinet meetings with President Reagan, or that President George H. W. Bush was not a particular fan of broccoli, but did you know the National Archives Catalog contains many food related records, including recipes from the White House chefs and First Families? The holdings … Continue reading The Catalog is Cooking!
Today’s post is the third (and last) in a series about recent enhancements to NARA’s flagship website, Archives.gov. On average, about 180,000 queries are entered into the search box on Archives.gov each month. Roughly 8-10% of those queries originate on our homepage. What these statistics tell us is that search is a critical pathway for … Continue reading Get More from Archives.gov with our New Search
This post comes from the team working on the Wartime Films engagement project, and is part of a series outlining how NARA is using design thinking to reach new and existing audiences. This project was made possible in part by the National Archives Foundation and a generous gift from an anonymous donor. Read the whole … Continue reading The Wartime Films Project: Choosing our User-Centered Design Pilot – A WWI App
It’s a fact that the National Archives holds billions of records. It’s also true that, even with the awesome level of description that staff accomplish each year, it’s a challenge to make items available online as fast as we’d like. Large scale digitization partnerships help, as does every individual record scanned by Citizen Archivists in … Continue reading National Archives at Boston Collaborates to Digitize Over 900 Popular Photos
From political campaigns to conventions, from constitutional amendments to landmark documents, the holdings of the National Archives document the history of American democracy in action. To share some of these historic moments, we are pleased to participate in Google Arts & Culture’s American Democracy collection, contributing thirteen interactive online exhibits that tell the story of presidential … Continue reading Sharing historic moments through Google Arts & Culture’s American Democracy Collection
