From coast to coast the National Archives is celebrating the 1940 census next week with events and workshops.  We hope you will join us! The National Archives at Boston will be offering a program called “The 1940 Census is Here Today!” on April 2nd.  Please email them at boston.archives@nara.gov for more information. The National Archives [...]

Just one week until the 1940 Census Release! We know you’ve been counting down (so have we!), and some of you may still be wondering how best to use these records once they are available. The National Archives will host a series of workshops during the first week of the 1940 Census release, April 2 [...]

We hope that you will be able to join us for the next meeting of the National Archives Researcher Forum.  It will be held on Friday, May 18, at 1:00 p.m. in G-25, the new classroom in the National Archives Building in Washington, DC (Archives I).  NARA’s digitization partners will return for continued discussion of [...]

Today’s post comes from Senior Archivist Bob Coren. There are some recent and upcoming changes that impact both National Archives researchers and staff. The Help Us Protect the Records – Orientation for Researchers at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) presentation is now available on the Archives.gov website. This online presentation is identical to [...]

It wasn’t so intimidating after all.

We ended our last blog, announcing the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program Symposium held on February 17 at the Newseum in Washington, DC. The purpose of the symposium was to reflect on what the NITRD Program has accomplished over the past 20 years.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, wandering into the Knight Conference Center, an humble archivist – a fish-out-of-water, feeling lost in a sea of black suits and aging baby-boomers. Every now and then, I’d spot an important face or two, people whom I’d recognized from huge posters of computer pioneers at the Microcenter computer store in Rockville. In fact, it was kind of like a red carpet event for science, academic, and computer geeks, or probably more appropriately, spotting rock stars of the computer world.

My first thoughts were, “Oh, no, what if the panels were way over my head?” Should I take a seat by the door for a quick escape just in case?” then suddenly, “Is that who I think it is sitting across from our table? Would I embarrass myself if I asked for an autograph?”

Here’s why I’m glad I stayed…

When talking about red and blue, many Americans think of the political happenings and the colors of states.  But before there were those geographic designations, red and blue were associated with the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and its networks. While in recent years there has been an increase in the number of entities corporations can [...]

Phillip Dick’s 1974 novel with this title is one of best treatments of the blurring line between man and machine. You may know it from the film based on the novel, Blade Runner. When machines are indistinguishable from humans, Dick asks, what does it mean to be a machine or a human. I have always [...]

This week is “Sunshine Week,” a week-long celebration of government openness!  Here’s a roundup of activities you might want to do as you celebrate Sunshine Week: Participate in the Open Government Idea Forum on IdeaScale.  Help shape the National Archives’ Open Government Plan.  Your ideas and input matter! Participate in the Managing Government Records discussion [...]

Today’s post comes from Michael Horsley, a Digital Imaging Specialist with the Digitization Services Team. During a long day of scanning glass plate negatives in the Digital Image lab a fleeting image with an intriguing caption caught my eye during a quality control inspection session. As hundreds of images depicting various scenes of the Brooklyn [...]

Today’s post comes from Stephanie Greenhut, Education Technology Specialist, in the Education and Public Programs division. March is Women’s History Month! To celebrate, we’ve created four new collections focusing on women of the past in the National Archives’ profile on Historypin. We began partnering with Historypin back in November, and have since been pinning historic [...]