This question just came in from a fan of the National Archives: Is there a consensus as to which presidential inaugural address was the best? I recognize that in this case “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” and it may be more accurate to think of the top five rather than single one [...]

NARA is in the very early stages of developing a process for electronically requesting records (i.e., an online pull slip). We are currently concentrating on requirements. We invite you to attend one or both of two meetings to discuss what requirements and features you’d like to see for doing records requests electronically.  Project director Rich Tomlinson will brief [...]

In the spirit of Earth Day throughout the coming year, the National Archives is collaborating with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on a new photography project. We are inviting you to submit your best photos of the environment you experience in your hometown or your travels. The Earth Day State of the Environment photo project [...]

We posted the first version of our social media strategy today on Archives.gov. Our overall approach is to engage our staff, the government community, and researchers and citizen archivists so we can be a more open agency while accomplish NARA’s mission more effectively. We express our core values and strategies for social media in three [...]

NARA launched a new blog this week. It’s the NDC Blog: Releasing All We Can, Protecting What We Must. The National Declassification Center (NDC) mission is to align people, processes, and technologies to advance the declassification and public release of historically valuable permanent records while maintaining national security. The NDC bloggers are seeking your input [...]

The minutes from the Researcher Users’ Group meeting on March 19th (PDF) are now available on the Archives.gov page for the Researcher Users Group at the National Archives in the Washington, DC Area. Please join us for the next meeting on Friday, April 23, 2010 at Archives 1 in Room G-24. What topics would you [...]

This guest blog post was written by Paul Wester, head of the Modern Records Programs at NARA. Portions of the genealogical community are under the impression that the 2010 Decennial Census forms will not be preserved by the NARA. This impression is mistaken. NARA has not officially received and registered a proposed records retention schedule [...]

As part of the Open Government initiative, NARA recently released six datasets available for the first time as raw data in XML format.  The datasets are: three editions (2007, 2008, and 2009) of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) archival descriptions from the Archival Research Catalog (ARC) organization descriptions from the Archival Research Catalog (ARC) [...]

The National Archives is working on responding to the Obama Administration’s Open Government Directive of December 2009, which was issued to promote new lines of communication and cooperation between the federal government and the American people. The Open Government Directive is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/documents/open-government-directive. Stay tuned for updates!

We are happy to announce that we are going to start having posts on Fridays that are related to family history and genealogy research — with an emphasis on online research and access. John and Katherine will be joining our team of bloggers, and they plan to take turns posting. Look for the first post [...]