Today’s post comes from guest blogger Doug Remley, who is a student research room technician in Research Services (RD-DC) at the National Archives Building in Washington, DC.  Doug offers a history lesson on how the Census Bureau celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  Future posts will include some of the unique findings [...]

On May 23, 2012, the White House released the Digital Government Strategy, which outlines how all federal agencies will work to make information and services easily accessible on the internet, anytime, anywhere, and on any device. President Barack Obama said, “Ultimately, this Strategy will ensure that agencies use emerging technologies to serve the public as [...]

In this post I’d like to highlight a particular set of records that probably don’t get as much attention as they deserve: certificates of discharge for Regular Army soldiers from the War of 1812.  The most likely reason for the slight attention these wonderful records receive is likely the fact that only a small portion [...]

June 18, 2012–the anniversary of the U.S. declaration of war against Great Britain–marked the official start of the bicentennial of the War of 1812.  To help celebrate that anniversary and bring attention to one of America’s lesser known conflicts, let’s take a look at some of the records of that war, starting with an essential [...]

The following post is by guest bloggers Rebecca Warlow, Description and Digitization Supervisor, and Ann Cummings, Supervisory Archivist for Textual Records. At the DC-Area Researchers Forum in November we announced that some records would be moving from the National Archives at College Park to the National Archives at St. Louis in 2012.  The time has [...]

  Calling all Citizen Archivists!  The 1940 census has been online for two weeks now.  We have heard many great stories about people you have found in the census.  We also know there are some of you who don’t know where people were living in 1940 and therefore cannot search the census without an name [...]

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 [...]

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…

The 1940 Census is almost here!  When it opens on April 2nd at 9:00 AM (Eastern), the place to be is the National Archives’ 1940 Census web site.  We are excited to announce that our home on the web will be:  1940Census.archives.gov We invite you to visit today to watch the video featuring National Archives’ [...]

Here is another entry from guest blogger Diane Petro, Archives Technician in the Archives I Research Support Branch (RD-DC), Research Services, Archival Operations – Washington, DC.  Diane helps staff the research rooms at the National Archives Building and has also been working on reference activities relating to the upcoming 1940 Census release. Time is moving [...]