A few weeks ago on The Text Message, I introduced Wikimedia’s Wikisource project to you. A sister project of Wikipedia, Wikisource is a free repository of primary-source texts which are transcribed, proofread, and arranged—like Wikipedia—collaboratively by a community of online volunteers. It is my pleasure to announce that, since August 15, Wikimedia’s presence now extends [...]

  On Saturday, August 6, more than a dozen Wikipedians attended the backstage pass tour and scanathon at the United States National Archives in College Park, Maryland. The day began at around 11 a.m., as attendees mingled casually among snacks and swag in a lecture room while others passed through security and registered for visitors [...]

For those of you who were unable to attend the August 18, 2011, Researcher Users Group briefing on changes to the research space at the National Archives Building in Washington, DC, the presentation and a script outlining what information was covered for each slide has been posted to the DC-area Researcher Users Group webpage. The [...]

Today’s post comes from Arian Ravanbakhsh, electronic records policy analyst in the Modern Records Programs at the National Archives. Our colleagues over at Records Express have written about the details of a records appraisal project that will result in considerably more records being transferred to us for permanent retention and made available for researchers. You [...]

Not all crimes are worthy of great publicity. Petty thievery is commonplace, and certainly does not warrant a lot of attention.  However, some cases are considered “perfect” crimes. One happened near Chicago and is documented not only in the National Archives, but also on television. In 1981, William Smarto, along with assistance from his brother [...]

Next week the Society of American Archivists (SAA) will gather for its annual meeting in Chicago at the Hyatt Regency (151 East Wacker Drive). There will be a number of presentations by NARA’s Applied Research staff and our Research Partners. On Tuesday, August 23rd at the 2011 Research Forum: Dr. Richard Marciano from the University of [...]

Just a reminder that the next Researcher Users Group briefing is this Thursday, August 18th at 1:30 pm in the McGowan Theater at Archives I.  As a follow up to the June meeting, Deputy Archivist of the United States, Debra Steidel Wall, will discuss the changes to the researcher space in the National Archives Building in Washington, DC. Please note that attendees [...]

Since the beginning of the Family Tree Friday blog, we’ve talked a lot about pension records and indexes, but I’m not too sure we’ve ever mentioned or even defined that other essential and related benefit of military service, the bounty land warrant!  Pensions, of course, have been granted to veterans since the end of the [...]

Maybe it was Memphis (with apologies to Pam Tillis) Recently in Nashville, Tennessee, the Council of State Archivists and the National Association of Government Records Administrators and Archives came together to share new ideas and renew old acquaintances.  About 175 archivists and records administrators were in attendance.  That’s down from last year both because of [...]