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 [...]

Students, do you ever look at the environment around you, and wonder about what it used to look like or what it will look like in the next few decades?  Are you interested in doing something constructive to help raise awareness for environmental issues?  Then we have the perfect contest for you!  The National Archives [...]

Many of us have met long-time computer types who began working with computers long before PCs began appearing in the late 1970s. We recently interviewed a fascinating man who celebrates 50 years of working with computers. He loves explaining how computers moved from being complex, monstrous beasts run by certain “intelligentsia” into practical, analytical tools for everyday people; to how computers today help us communicate and work with each other, within different, newer social frameworks.

His career led him to some fascinating developments in computer science, including early contributions to the beginnings of the Internet, where he now sits at the helm of a strategic team that is braving the most challenging tasks of dealing with Government information in the clouds.

Dr. George O. Strawn is not just another computer/IT official who rose from the ranks – he is one of the most important thought leaders within Federal Government IT circles today. Plus, he loves the National Archives, because he says, “we bring to the table some of the toughest IT problems for all of the federal government that need to be solved in our time.”

Read the first in our series of Applied Research interviews called “At the top of our List: Thought Leaders You Should Know”

Founded in 1936, the Society of American Archivists (SAA) celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. During the week of August 22, almost 1,800 archives professionals from all over the globe gathered in Chicago, Illinois for SAA’s annual meeting and anniversary celebration. Today’s blog features my introductory remarks for SAA session #701 that I chaired, “New Perspectives for the 1940 Census” providing a quick history of innovative technologies used for processing and accessing census data.

At the NAGARA plenary address in Nashville a few weeks ago, I was asked to talk about NARA’s new Applied Research Division, which wandered into an explanation about why we haven’t been ERA Research for the past two years. Folks were encouraged to attend my 1940 Census session, featuring NARA research partners who are using cool smart tools to make sense out of scanned images—there was not an empty chair in the room, leading to fruitful discussions and promising collaborations…and that’s what you missed at NAGARA! Read the full story here…

We asked our new Wikipedian in Residence, Dominic McDevitt-Parks, to tell us a little bit about himself and his passion for Wikipedia.  Welcome to the National Archives, Dominic! Tell us a little about yourself.  Where are you from?  What do you study in school? I am a history buff, a word nerd, a news junkie, [...]

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 [...]

Last week, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC) held its Spring meeting in Alexandria, VA (May 5-7, 2011). If you missed the conference, today’s Tech Tuesday post is a summary of two events related to MARAC Session S5, “New Tools to Address Electronic Records Challenges.”

On April 28th the United States Navy and its support contractor, IBM, hosted an Educational Summit featuring educators from colleges and universities in WV, MD, and PA at the Navy’s Allegany Ballistics Laboratory (ABL) at Rocket Center, WV. Read about the Summit that included a visit to NARA’s Applied Research Laboratory at ABL, where college students (hired by IBM) collaborate with NARA on advanced IT research projects.

On April 13-14, Fynnette Eaton (NHA) and Kevin Devorsey (NWM) participated in a stakeholders meeting of the Unified Digital Format Registry (UDFR), held at the Library of Congress, along with 22 cultural memory institutions concerned with digital preservation. UDFR aims to pool the expertise of these archival communities to document characteristics that can be used to identify file formats, and then to document the information in an authoritative knowledge base.