So good morning. Phones aways. I am David Ferriero, I am the Archivist of the United
States. It's a pleasure to welcome you here to the National Archives or my house I would
like to say. How many of you have ever been here before? Great. The purpose of today is
to give you some idea of the different kinds of functions that we have here at the National
Archives so it is and opportunity to think about as you are studying and thinking about
careers and opportunities for you to get involved in the work of the government in a way that
you are probably didn't realize was possible for you. The National Archives is responsible
for all the records of the government, that means all of the agencies like the Department
of Agriculture or Department of Energy in the course of their business every day they
are creating lots of records some of them on paper but mostly electronic these days
and our job is to make sure that those records are being created and taken care of in a way
that a hundred years from now people are going to be able to come to the National Archives
and look at those records and determine, make judgments about how effective the government
was to track how decisions were made and why did they decide to do this as opposed to that?
So it's a huge responsibility. We have been at it since 1934. At this point we have in
our holdings about 13 billion pieces of paper. 13 billion pieces of paper that's one and
a half million trees if you laid those pieces of papers end to end they would circle the
globe 87 times, so that's a lot of paper. We are in 44 facilities around the country
and we are responsible for 14 presidential libraries. All of the records of Presidents
from Herbert Hoover all the way up to Barack Obama are part of our holdings. Presidential
libraries in West Branch Iowa all the way up to Chicago Illinois in our holdings. People
come from all over the world to read and use our records and we have more than a million
people a year upstairs going through the rotunda to see the most precious of our documents
the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights it is just amazing, as
I said, we didn't start getting serious about the records until 1935. Its just amazing that
those charters upstairs in the rotunda survived they were signed in Philadelphia where the
capital was at the time, they were dragged to New York when the capital changed, they
were brought here to Washington as the capitol moved to Washington at risk during the war
of 1812 when the British burned the town.The night before that fire a clerk in the State
Department rolled the charters up and stuffed them in linen sacks, commandeered a wagon
on the street and took the charters of Freedom into the hills of Virginia. That's the only
reason they are sitting in the rotunda today, The quick action of the clerk in the State
Department. The fastest part growing part of the collection is electronic mail, as you
might expect. I think you see a lot in the press recently about the use of electronic
mail and social media. Especially tweets. Our records start with the oaths of allegiance
signed at Valley Forge by George Washington and his troops and they go all the way up
to the tweets being created in the White House as I am speaking. That's our job to collect
all of those tweets and make sure they are available just as the paper is available for
future generations to be able to use. So all of that work that we do to ensure that those
records are available takes a village of workers, different kinds of competencies and different
kind of staff, at the tables outside kind of describe the kinds of roles, the kinds
of jobs that make that access possible if preservation and conservation staff to make
sure paper, especially and films is taken care of in a way that will last a hundred
years, five hundred years. We have research people and research librarians and curators
and archivists who work with people so that they get access to the information and you
do a lot of digitization and turning paper into digital copies so people around the world
can access them without having to come here. A great varieties of different kinds of jobs
that rely on different kinds of skills that it gives you a sense of how big and broad
the scope of the National Archives is. So that's who we are and what we do and I hope
that you take advantage of the time here to ask questions to take a look around and get
into the rotunda to get a close up look of the Declaration of Independence. I am happy
to answer any questions? >> Inaudible question.
>> No questions? >> Yes.
>> Yell. >> Where does the data go?
>> What data, you mean the electronic records? We capture them and put them in our electronic
record archive. Sam McClure is outside at a table to discuss and fill you in on what
we are planning for our next version of our electronic record archive. It's a huge database
with all the electronic records. >> Yes.
>> 44 facilities around the country and we have huge facility out of College Park in
Maryland on campus. This building, a huge facility in St. Louis where all the military
records are and all the civilian personnel records and then other facilities from Seattle,
Washington to Waltham Massachusetts. >> Inaudible question.
>> No it's because there wasn't just as there was no President no National Archives there
was no presidential library system until Franklin Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt contributed
his library as the first presidential library and Herbert Hoover decided he wanted one so
starting with Herbert Hoover and going forward. The papers and materials from the other previous
Presidents are scattered all over the country some at the library of Congress and some in
other kinds of collections. Yes. >> Why do we rely on technology to store all
of our data. It's very expensive to store paper. It doesn't make it easy for people
from around the world to have access to it. Our goal is to make it available 24 hour as
day 7 days a week. The only way to do it is to have it in electronic form. It's more
efficient to create and store electronically. There are lots of financial economic benefits
to as well as access benefits to having it electronic. As you know when you have an assignment
the first thing you do probably is go on‑line right to see if you can find information about
it you probably Google right? We want to make sure that when you Google you find National
Archives stuff that's of use to you. >> Inaudible question.
>> So security is a huge problem and for each of our facilities and our what I would call
the high end things the most valuable documents like the Declaration of Independence has special
security arrangements. We have kept all of our very precious documents in vaults that
have limited access only two or three people have access to them. We have tight security,
entrance security and exit security so all kinds of meeasures to guarantee the material
is safe. >> Inaudible question.
>> The safest way to display? Yeah we are really concerned, if you go into the rotunda
and see how dark it is it has to do with the amount of light that we expose those documents
to. We limit the amount of light, environmental conditions are controlled. Those are encased
in a special environment so that we are reducing the potential for the ink to disappear. We
think that they are state of the art enclosures right now. Yes? With the cyber security issues
are huge and concerns about protecting the electronic information are things that we
deal with every day. And if you talked to Sam McClure at his table he will talk to you
about the thinking that's going into the new version of our electronic records archive
to ensure that it can't be hacked. >> Inaudible question.
>> I can't hear you. >> Sure this is a government wide problem
as you know, and we are approaching this not just as the National Archives but as the U.S.
government. >> Inaudible question.
>> The museum you I don't know when was the museum established? The
museum yeah ‑‑ 2003. >> Inaudible.
>> 2003 is when we really became you know a full fledged museum, but the rotunda was
designed with the intent that those original documents would sit there. When we opened
in 35 everything but the Declaration was there right?
>> So the Constitution wasn't there. The library of Congress had custody of the Constitution
and Declaration of the Independence until 1952 but that's another story I won't get
into today. Yes. >> So its possible to make claims about how
things happened or what laws really said what the intent was of the law how we got into
an international situation like a war and it's possible to rewrite history by saying
or by just saying it happened in a different way. This place is responsible for ensuring
that the documents that tell the real story are saved and preserved and are available
for your ability to hold the government accountable so in order to do this it's the originals
that we need. That's what we do and we take that very seriously. Thats why our concerns
around cyber security electronic information is to ensure that people cannot only change
or delete their content of those electronic records. Yes?
>> Inaudible question. >> The
document it self doesn't change the interpretation of history changes as new information is discovered
but the original content of those records does not change. The, and this is just my
own opinion, the ease at which electronic information can be hacked or accessed or destroyed
or deleted is a much greater threat than the access to the issues around paper content
no way about it. Yes. >> There will be a point where we are out
of the paper business completely. >> The Library of Congress is responsible
for collecting everything that isn't published by the government. So anything created in
the United States basically they collect wonderful special collections and archival collections
of the earlier pre-1934 presidential records also, materials. But we are responsible for
the records that were created by the government we have here in this place. A lot of overlap
in terms of subject area and complimentary collections and that goes for the Smithsonian
too, the Smithsonian and the library of Congress and the National Archives have many complimentary
collections. We just collaborated on creating an app on World War I three institutions.
>> The State Department and then it was moved to the Library of Congress and then this building
it was designed for the rotunda was designed to house the Declaration in fact there was
a tabernacle that was built in the rotunda for the Declaration itself. The librarian
of Congress refused to give it up. It wasn't until 1952 there was a different librarian
of Congress in place that came here with great pomp and heavy security, tanks and military
people bringing it down the street and up the stairs and into the rotunda. Yes. The
Declcaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, and that is kind of unique. Other countries don't celebrate
their charters the way we do. >> Inaudible question.
>> Depending on who created it and the laws that govern that. The two sets of laws are
the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act. The Presidential Records Act
is pretty clear about everything created by the President in the White House we would
be capturing on the federal record side which controls what happens in the executive branch
agencies, the cabinet agency for instance. It depends on the purpose of the use of electronic
of social media and if it is used to communicate new information for the first time or to provide
procedures or policy then it would be captured. All of those records are scheduled and described
in advance at the purpose of the records and how long they need to be kept. It was pretty
proscribed. Yes. Classified as well. >>There is classified information in several
of the presidential libraries. >> I can't hear you.
>> Inaudible question. >> Taking data from other countries? There
are several examples of things that we have in our holdings from other countries like
the records of the Nuremburg trials after World War two are here.
>> It depends on whose responsible, you mean if it got out of here? It depends on the the
situation I couldn't tell you. One more question. You mean the directorates from the agencies
for instance it depends on who created it and where they were created and which facility
of those 44 facilities is responsible for housing it. It could be if it's the State Department
for instance it would be in College Park. Divided it up depending on which agency created
it. They are all over the country depending on which agency created it would go to the
appropriate facility. Okay. (applause)
>> Well good morning everyone. >>I'm here.
>>Hello. >>Good morning everyone.
>>Thank you. >> You asked great questions and I am so glad
I was here to hear them. So I am going to just show you some great documents that we have…
>>yes? >>Okay. We'll catch up
>> What I'd like to do is at the end of this inspire you to do more research. How many of
you have been here before and done research? >>Okay, so you have done research at the National
Archives. >>Mostly online or at, okay, alright so you
have been here and I hope you are going to do more research whether it is online or at
our facilities. As you heard from David Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States,we only
have 44 of them all over the country. >>When you get a researcher card it's good
for a year at any of our facilities and when you come to the facility you can also have
access to other databases that we pay for the Archives pay for you and they are free
to you when you come into research at our facilities. Also sometimes public libraries
have these kinds of databases but they are a little bit more limited. so your research
card gets you a lot of access. >> So basically what kind of primary sources
can you find at the National Archives. And I will give you examples. Are there any use
restrictions? You've heard that our records are from federal facilities, government facilities
so you think that all will be public but not all of them are because not all of them come
from federal agencies and are they all available on‑line? You heard we've got 13 billion
pieces of paper plus other stuff motion pictures so a tiny staff with a tiny budget so you
can imagine that if it's all going to be on‑line. The first question is always how
is my topic related to the National Archives and to government agencies, federal government
agencies and you might think about which federal agency might have records related to your
topic. It's not an easy question but we make it a bit easier because when you go on
our website you have something called the guide to federal records which will then give
you more information and give you ideas for where you might look. So you heard from David
Ferriero that in the old days before the 1930's most of our records were held in the garage
of the White House. With tires an all kinds of things there. So right now we are in very
good shape, on‑line and you can also send your research questions to the National Archives
to see whether we have what you need or not? Our 44 facilities are all over the country.
If you have any questions let me know, by the way my background is in education I am
part of the education and public program staff, so when you are talking about careers we don't
only have people who have MLS's which is library science and archives, we have people
in accounting you know that we have to keep it all together an not spend all the money
in one place. We have administrators,we have educators and we have people who do exhibits
and you can go outside to talk to everybody. We have people with chemistry backgrounds
who do our preservation. So we have and I am in our College Park facility which I love
it's beautiful. It's the largest modern archives in the world and we have got many different
places on‑line that you can find our resources,archives.gov of course ‑‑ docsTeach for educators and
for students we have a lot of documents, thousands of documents there and not just paper records
but films and photographs an all. Our catalog is what we call it the catalog has everything
that is on‑line should be in there. We have a YouTube channel. You can find music that's
in the archives and maps are in the archives there, archives foundation.org, oftentimes
we have great programs and they are recorded and you can find them there. And then presidential
library websites they have their own collection of audio‑visual. For example I might not
find something in College Park where, by the way, we have all our special media plus our
textual, textual means paper records. Generally speaking everything from 1900 up is in College
Park everything earlier than that in Archives one, but there some exceptions. What will
you not find at the National Archives? Remember we are the holders and provide access to records
of the federal government. Not state government, not county, not city. Church records will
not be here. That's really important to know. So when I started working at the National
Archives in College Park about nine years ago. I was surprised the first week I was
there to find this photograph on the fifth floor by our still pictures Department. I
grew up with her music I wondered why she was in the archives because she's a south
African musician singer an human rights activist. What I want to do is show you some important
things some important clues. The U.S. Information agency has sort of has a propaganda for the
rest of the world and it's not normally shown here for at least 12 years after it's produced.
This was part of the festival and it was recorded, do you see 306 that is the number, the record
group number that's really important if you take anything away record group number assigned
to the U.S. Information Agency. Right away we know that if U.S. Information Agency record
group 306 do you see the source, it doesn't say public domain. It says that it came from
the TV station which means that if you wanted to use it you have to get permission in writing
from them. And a lot of people that will give it to you especially National History Day
students. And that's why we don't have a lot of our things on‑line because it is private.
Now, a lot of times people, our archivists will say come to do research at the National
Archives as the last thing you do in your research. So what did I do to begin with when
I saw this woman's photograph. I read her books. She's got two autobiographies, which led me to other things and people she knew an I read those as well.
That's how I learned she performed with Harry Belafonte at JFK's birthday. So I went online to look for it at the National Archives and didn't
find it. But then I realized the JFK Library probably has it. So I created a presentation
I did here and at both of our facilities so I could call them up and say do you any pictures
related to this particular show, this - JFK's birthday. If so, let me know and scan them
for me.They did and they put them online. so They are now available on-line. So as you
can see, this is in the public domain so anyone can use it. The number here is really important,
because let's say you actually wanted, you were writing a book and you wanted a really
high resolution picture. You'd want to get that original picture and then have it scanned
at a high resolution. This is not high-res.Here is another photograph from the JFK library.
Here is JFK, himself, and Harry Belafonte, it's this guy right here (indicating). Do
any of you know who he is? Great. He is an activist, a musician and singer, and actor
and very active even today. Voice of America, we have thousands , now these are reels, they
are reels of radio shows and programs created as part of the U.S. Information Agency. So
when I talked with our motion pictures people in the research room they told me they had
a finding aid, it's like an index, of all these Jazz Hour recordings. And when I looked
through the finding aids I saw Miriam Makeba being interviewed. So I went and got a tape
recording of that. And actually I can play this for you. Do you want to hear it?
>>Okay. >> 2386 B second hour Tuesday July 11, 1961.
Then there's a bit of a pause, with the Voice of America Jazz Hour. One year ago Miriam
Makeba came to America from south Africa. We will meet Ms. Makeba in person tonight.
Now here she is on a record to introduce one of her songs.
>> In my native village in Johannesburg there is a song we always sing when a young girl
gets married it's called the Click song by the English because they cannot say (indecipherable) Music...
>> Okay you get the idea can anyone do the
click and sing? (laughter) well, you can practice. So anyway we have got thousands of these recordings
on big reels and I would encourage you to go listen to them sometime when you have time
an can get up to College Park, so I looked at all kinds of things and because I read
her autobiographies I understood and learned that she was married to Stokely Carmichael
who was also a supporter of the Black Panther movement therefore the FBI was looking into
him and looking into her. It wasn't a very good situation at the time for either of them.
So we have got records now not only in record group 306 which is U.S. Information Agency
but now we have it in the FBI. They were also record groups that I was really surprised
that there was a video of her film in the Social Security Administration records because
they were promoting Social Security and out in California in Hollywood they were doing
these interviews with TV personalities or authors or musicians sort of popular people.
You will never know what you might find. Since we are talking about JFK I want to show you
some other things this is a propaganda posters. We have thousands of beautiful posters and
as you know space exploration was really important to his administration. And this was I think
in Beirut this is popularized all over the world and we actually this is part of a public
diplomacy, cultural diplomacy was really important in that period. Here is another poster can
you imagine us doing this today? That would be nice wouldn't it? This is a movie that
U.S.I A., U.S. Information Agency created in 1964 after President Kennedy's assassination.
It's a wonderful film I looked at it on the weekend. It goes over his life as President
and that's what the Years of Lightning are. All the things he managed to do and envision
and bringing to fruition while he was still alive. To Day of Drums which is when he was
brought here and buried. It's very powerful I would really suggest you look at it. Here
are some more of our posters,on left side we have earth day posters we sent all over
the world. On the right is a different group the U.S. Forest Service that did something
really nice as well. I mentioned we have a lot of different places we have on‑line
records. We have also got blogs and Christa MacAuliffe was a social studies teacher she
was the first teacher in space this was a program that was that was initiated during
President Reagan's administration and continues until to day but in a different way. It was
sad that we had one of our major disasters with the space shuttle Challenger and I wrote
a blog last year when we were commemorating the space shuttle Challenger. Check out our
blogs as well on‑line. We've also made it easier to find things by going — by looking
at topics and here's a topic called people and you find research and ethnic heritage.
You can research by topic and you can actually see something on Pete Seeger and if you don't
does anyone know who he is? Excellent I want you to look him up because he would be a great
person for this years National History Day and he's a great person for next year's
National History Day topic. He's one of my favorites actually. We have got photographs
on American Indians this is a Creek person receiving the Medal of Honor in Italy in World
War II. Here are three American Indian women from three different tribes who served in
the Marine Corps. And this is what our website looks like. You can go right there to the
top and put your topic in there an see what you find if nothing comes up or little comes
up please don't stop we have got all kinds of ways to research. Go here and you can look
at educator resources and let me show you a couple of other pages. If you do research
our records you get all of this. And I showed you a little bit about researching a topic.
These are some of the topics you can research. I would like you to go to row to go to educator
resources, docsteach, as I mentioned has a lot of records, you also have a lot of activities
you can learn in class. People come here all the time and go to our presidential libraries
and we have National History Day resources you don't need to go all over the place we
have them here ready for you. And in docsteach you can find photographs like this. This was
during President Kennedy's administration. We had a huge civil rights March on Washington.
Here's docsteach thousands of primary sources and then we also have a very neat program
that we support National History Day called Normandy institute. It's junior high school
students and teachers. It's a team. We have 15 teamss across the country that get selected
to be in this program that comes to DC for a week and they go to Normandy for a week
but before that they do a whole lot of research on a serviceman that they select from their
town or city or state or county. When they come back they create a website on this person
to commemorate what that person's sacrifice was. I've got a team of volunteers at the
Archive ins College Park who do some research to help them. So if you are doing anything
on World War II or on Normandy and you get to be part of that program we put all of our
research that we have done here. We make it easy for you. We got films that we found and
map that we found and here are the films that are already on‑line on our YouTube channel.
We have docsteach activities and the kinds of records that we have at FDR's museum
and Harry Truman's museum. It's all here if that's the kind of topic you want to research.
So what kind of primary sources can you find? Textual, there's motion picture there's maps,
music did I miss anything? Okay. How about are there any use restrictions? Yes or no?
Yes. Mostly there is no restriction but there are some especially on photographs that may
have come to us from elsewhere, motion pictures that might have come to us from elsewhere.
Are they all available on‑line? Nope. Maybe one day maybe a hundred years from now or
maybe if we get a huge budget to get all kinds of people to come and digitize our records
maybe, so the basic thing is don't give up if you don't find it in one place and don't
give it if you don't find it on‑line sometimes you have to actual ly do your research and
come to us, so are there any questions? >> Inaudible question. How nice she is bringing
the microphone to you. >> How do you have a chance to volunteer for
it? How do schools get to in here. Because you said you can go to Normandy to do research
and stuff. >> That particular program it's through National
History Day. If you go to their website you'll see the application and it's due usually
in November or December of each year and then you follow their application process.
>> Thank you. >> You are welcome.
>> Okay. 14 years of age >> Repeat the question.
>> How old do you have to be to get a research card and where do you get it?
>> You can get a research card at any of our research facilities there now we said there
are 44 facilities at the National Archives but not all of them are research facilities
you here in the DC area you can do research which is A one which DC or Archives two. We
have a registration room you come in and you mention to the officers that you want to do
research. They will send you to our registration room. It takes about 20 minutes to do your
research card it has a picture of you. The training gives you an idea of what the rules
are in the research room and there is a lot. Because many of you talked about security
and that's part of the training. Researchers need to be 14 years of age to get a research
card however, if you are younger and come with an adult the adult can get a research
card and I think the student can get them do you know? But you have to be with adult
and when you come to do research if you are under 14 you have to come with an adult. There
should be one adult per student by the way. You can't have a teacher an bring 20 students.
>> How much research is actually done here at the archives.
>> A lot of research is done here. Remember I told you that our earlier records are in
this facility. All of our paper records generally speaking before 1900 are here. A lot of people
doing genealogy research come here. We have congressional records, court records here.
I am trying to think we have our Indian records Bureau of Indian affairs records here, so
there are a lot of researchers to come. >>Yes.
>> Let's say you use a video or a picture in your research ‑‑ how do you cite it?
>> Good question. Let me back up a little bit, If you are going to use photographs or
videos when you come to archives you can actually bring your camera, and scanner but you just
can't bring your covers with you you bring just the device with you. We have got a page
on our website that shows you how to do the citation. But if you actually want that I
can send it to you. I can send it to your teacher just send me a note. It's really important
that you saw the information that I gave you sort of the record group number. The photograph
number and all of that is important because if someone else wants to check your citation
you have it all there. I f you just said National Archives, it's like so what? You know, but
great question. That's my pet peeve by the way.
>> Time for one more. >> Yes.
>>If you have a card can you access the databases can you access them from outside with the
card you know if you are in your office? Away from it or do you have to be here.
>> You have to be at the research facility to be able to use our public access computers
to get those you can't do it from home? >> There's no password?
>> If you use your public library a lot of times you have your own ways getting into
the public library system you can do it from home. They might not have the same full versions
that we would have. >> You have to be here to use the databases
that are here? >> Correct.
>> Thank you. And good luck. >> At 11: 30 we have our next speaker Jesse
Kratz. She is going to be talking about the National Archives mission and purpose.
>> Basically I'm going to talk about why the National Archives was created and all
the various job that support our mission. I have lots of photos for you today. I am
a visual person. First of all this is an over head image of where we are standing now in
1930. The circle is here you notice that's not the building that we are in and you can
see you know it's the White House and you can see the Washington monument and there
was a market here where we were. There was a huge market and 700 vendors, they sold produce,
fish and anything you can think of but if there was a market here where were we? We
didn't exist back then. We weren't created until 1934 over 80 years ago can you it's
probably older than your grandparents are. It was a long time ago. If we weren't here
where were were our records? This is an image of records storage before the National Archives
was created. And the records we have are from federal agencies and from courts and from
congress and records storage was not a priority for them. Look at this room, probably not
an ideal place to store your permanently valuable records of the federal government. In these
rooms there were rats, there were bugs subject to theft and to fire they were, more importantly
they are not accessible to people. People couldn't research them. They were scattered
all over the city and allover the country in rooms just like this. So two prominent
historians, J. Franklin Jameson and Waldo Gifford Leland, They decided they really needed
to lobby Congress and asked Congress to create a national archive to not only bring these
records together in one place, but to preserve them, keep them safe forever but all make
them available to the public. So they tore down the market. This is where we are standing
in 1931 completely empty. They created the building that we are in over a couple of years.
It was established and then we went out and congress created the agency itself. The building
was actually created before the agency was. The mission of the Archives was to preserve
the records and make them available to the public. That was in 1934 so again a little
bit more than 80 years ago. Then our staff went out and got all the records from all
the various storage rooms and attics and brought them to the National Archives. From that one
building if you were here and listened to the archivist earlier we now have 44 locations
across the country that make records available to the public and further our mission. Our
mission is to collect, preserve and make available the official records of federal government.
These are record that agencies in the court and Congress create during their daily business
about one to three percent of what they are creating are permanently valuable and that
means that is we need to keep them forever so they come here to the National Archives.
What's the importance of this? The records they help us claim our rights and entitlement.
They help hold our elected officials accountable, they document our history as a nation. How
do we accomplish this mission. What are the jobs here at the people of the National Archives
to help further these points. I kind of lumped them into two different categories, one are,
and this is a picture in the 30's of the archivists. One is more internal facing. Sort of behind
the scenes jobs that you may not necessarily know exist.And that you do not necessarily
see. We have all of these records being created by all of these agencies, the courts and Congress
so we need staff to bring them to the National Archives. What they normally do is that they
go to big record centers across the country. They eventually make it to whatever part of
the National Archives where they are supposed to live forever. We also have staff performing,
what we call, holdings maintenance of documents. These are basically taking the records in
these boxes and putting them into these other boxes that are more appropriate for record
storage. But they also go through the materials to make sure that anything in the boxes isn't
there to harm the records they are pulling things out like paper clips and staples and
things. Anything that shouldn't be in the box with records. They are organizing them
and creating what we call finding aids to help researchers find these records. It's
not enough to keep the records we also want the public to be able to see our records.
We keep our record in what's called stacks. These are large rooms and has anyone seen
been over to see the stacks in the learning center has anyone been to a learning center
yet.There is sort of a replica. You should go over there and see the replica stacks.
This is where we keep all of our records, this is actually a photo of one at Archives
2, their stacks move. The ones here just stay but they have movable shelving, so a lot of
our staff work in these stacks when researchers want to come view our records they have go
in and find where the records are located and pull the records and let the researchers
see them and when researchers are done they refile them. We have a huge conservation
staff. Not all the records we get come to us un very good condition. We have staff that
mend them and put them in appropriate housing and if that documents want to go on exhibit
then our conservation staff have to review them to see if they are able to be displayed
safely. We also have conservation staff that clean our records not all the records that
come to us are in ideal condition so our staff go in and clean the records and this is especially
true about records that is have been subject to water damage or fire before arriving to
the National Archives. Is everyone familiar with the term films, do we all know what film
is. okay. I was worried you wouldn't know what film is. We have a large film collection
and these are basically images on reels as they spin are projected on a wall and create
an illusion of a moving image and this is how people went to the movies a hundred years
ago. We have a massive amount of film and a lot of it is deteriorating, which means
it's cracking or it somehow being destroyed in a very I guess slow process. Our staff
was trying to save these films by either repairing them or transferring them to digital, so we
have staff that take these films and they will transfer them to a digital form and they
also maybe digitally restore them so people can see the films we have. One of our goals
is to make access happen, we want to have our documents available to the public, a recurring
theme, so we have a large amount of our staff that are in charge of digitizing documents
so they are scanning paper documents or films or maps, photographs and are making available
to the public. Finally we have staff that describe these documents and make them available
on-line.We can't just put our images on‑line and expect you to know what they are. We have
a large amount of staff that describe these documents as we put them on‑line. Now, the
second sort of position these are very generally, general terms are people who help the public.
These are the people that you probably run into if you are coming to research at the
National Archives. Researchers. They want to come in and use our records and they want
to research something so we have staff that help the researchers and we also have staff
that monitor the researchers in the research room. These records we have many of them are
the only copy that exist. If the researcher tries to take them or damage them we need
to be very aware of whats going on in our research room to stop that from happening.
We have a large social media presence. Does anyone follow us at National Archives on twitter
or Facebook page or Instagram or anything like that? We have a very big social media
presence we do the document of the day. We basically take a lot of our records and make
them, again, you know tell the story about the document and make them available on social
media. We also have a huge amount of staff that helps with students and teachers, does
anyone use docsteach, it has lessons plans and images available, so we have docsteach
which is a website where teachers can go and find original documents and then ideas about
how to teach about those documents in the classroom. Also I did mention we had our learning
center where students can go in and learn about American history using our documents.
Hopefully you guys get a chance to go over there today. We have a public, we do a public
program staff and events. I would consider today a public program. We have lots of individuals
who work behind the scenes too make this happen. This photograph here is of the fourth of July
where we have an event every year and get to have a re-reading of the Declaration of
Independence and our staff hold these signs to get the audience excited about the Declaration
we encourage them to yell Huzzah during this event. Not just here in Washington but all
over the country we have exhibits, have you toured the exhibits yet have you been over
here when you get into the rotunda and see the Declaration of the Independence and the
Constitution yet? When we have exhibits around and around the rotunda these are ways to bring,
to put historical documents in context and make them available to the public. We have
people who create the exhibits. These are called curators and they are the ones who
decide what's going to be in the exhibit. They maybe write that exhibit label that you
see by a document. We have other staff that their job is to actually build the exhibits
themselves and they are the one who are putting the documents on the wall or the graphics
on the wall. Then we have people who do tours of these exhibits for various groups including
student groups that come in and we will talk about the creation or the importance of the
exhibit. Finally we have staff that produces videos, we have a videographer, he takes the
holdings of the Archives and he makes the videos, he makes them available to the public.
You get an idea of what we do here at the National Archives. So I talked about the kinds
of jobs that we have, why is this important and why are we doing this? Who uses our records?
Well, we have students who are writing papers, we have grandmothers who are researching their
family history. And we have historians writing books and veterans seeking their pension and
journalists writing articles and lawyers researching for cases and teachers who want to create
lesson plans and agencies who are looking to research their own policies basically everyone
including you can research at the National Archives. So you guys have any questions?
>> Yes. >> question inaudible
>>Oftentimes if it hasn't been produced or hasn't already been microfilmed or made
available for the digital means in our catalog you will get that box and the original record
if you are researching your great grandfather's military file and pension record you might
get a piece of paper that he actually signed, the actual document. I say it's important
that we monitor our research rooms because that piece of paper is the only one that exists
and something happens to that piece of paper then we don't have that information any more.
We have 13 billion pages of textual records alone. Se we haven't scanned every one of
those pages yet. So the answer is definitely yes, sometimes you are holding the original
piece of paper. >> question inaudible
>> Today's Document? There's an app and if you go to archives.gov you can link to
it. That's really interesting, it has been going on for years now it's a fantastic resource.
>> Yeah, if you can use a microphone that would probably be best. There's a light here
so I can barely see you. >> Can you talk a little bit about the diversity
of the educational backgrounds of the individuals who work here at the Archives because some
people say I should only major in history or this is the only place for people who are
into history can you talk a little bit about the diversity.
>> Our staff by far has the most varied background. We have people who did history and museum
studies and clinical science and who did education and but we also have people who did our, their
people who work in our conservation staff they might have a chemistry background and
they are work anything sciences and we have I mean basically I mean we don't just have.
We work behind the scenes in our human resources office, so basically you know we have people
from every single background here and not just in the humanities and other sciences
and other areas as well. >> How old do you have to be to work in your
Department? >> I'm sorry I didn't hear that?
>> How old do you have to be to work in your Department?
>> How old I am not sure to be a federal employee do you have to be 18 I am not sure do you
know? >> No.
>> There are student employees all jobs are on U.S.A. jobs. There are a lot of seasonal
positions and student positions that is you can get while you are still in school and
high school and college and once you graduate you can transition to permanent and full time
work. >> Anybody else have a question raise your
hand so I can bring you to Mic. >> Sorry.
>>I was talking to someone I think it was in human resources I thought she did say you
have to be 18 to be employed here is that not correct?
>> I actually do not know how old you have to be to be employed here we've had interns
that were younger than 18 before. Okay we definite ly had people who worked here that
were younger than 18 before. I know people who started at this agency at 17 and 16 and
have been here for 40 years. >> Thank you so much. I will be back at 1230
to talk more about the protecting government records.
>> Christine Blackerby will be our next speaker at noon and she will be talking about using
the records of the National Archives in exhibits.
>> Welcome to the National Archives building
for public service recognition week. I am happy to be here to talk to you about the
kind of work I do. I hope that at least a few of you are inspired by what we do that
you seek out a future for yourselves in history, archives or museums. I am going start by telling
you a little bit about my usual job and then go into more about what my job has been lately.
My job is to do educational and public outreach for the Center for Legislative Archives which
is part of the National Archives that means that I work with students like yourselves
and teachers and the general public to use documents from the National Archives to increase
understanding of the history of Congress and legislative processes and representative democracy.
The Center for Legislative Archives, my office, holds the historically valuable records created
or received by the U.S. Senate an House of Representatives. While they go about the business
of making or amending laws for the whole nation. To raise awareness of Congress an Congressional
history I and others on the outreach staff identify historical records from congress related to relevant events an then we use the documents
for several things. We create on-line classroom resources, we speak at historical, archive and educational conferences,
we create educational publications, conduct teacher workshops, create exhibits, and also create social media content.
And I know that congress isn't particularly popular right now, I feel very lucky to work with congressional records. Every major current
of American history is reflected in the work of Congress in some way for example technological
innovation leads to new laws to regulate them. Disasters lead to congressional investigations
such as the 9‑11 commission and social problems lead to new laws that is help resolve those
issues, so I think that the history of America is the history of Congress and I get to see
that history up close and personal through Congress' historical record. My job is to
bring those records out of their boxes to you. On any given day I be digging to how
Mexican laborers were treated during World War II , to what happened on Wall Street that
lead to the stock market crash in 1929, to why congress declared war against Great Britain
in 1812. I love that every day my job is different. I look for documents that can be use in classrooms
to help students understand what happened and why it's important and to help students
think critically about information that is presented in historical documents. Critical
thinking is an especially important skill to learn and the history class is the right
place to learn it. If you can't figure out how to extract useful information or identify
false or bias information from a historical document then you might not be able to do
the same for an advertisement or a political campaign ad or a car sales man where your
incorrect interpretation or information could cost you money or time or your health. We
have a lot of documents here at the Archives that can be used for this. It's my job to
find the good ones in the 13 billion documents that we hold and bring them out of the box
for you to see and read. One of the outreach platforms I have already mentioned is museum
exhibits, and that's what I am going to talk about next because that's what I have
been doing lately. Last year I co-curated a museum exhibit called Amending America ‑ which
is located upstairs in this building in the O'Brien gallery. It highlights the remarkably
American story how we have amended or attempted to amend our Constitution in order to form
a more perfect union. The exhibit features historical documents held by the National
Archives that speak in some way to the more than 11, 000 attempts we American's have made
to amend our fundamental governing charter, our Constitution. The only 27 ways that is
we have successfully done so. There's a lot of really fascinating stories there that illustrate
who we Americans think we are and think we should be. Constitutional amendments, successful
and failed, provide a unique window into America and this exhibit has attempted to capture
that view. This is the first time I have created a museum exhibit although I have regularly
assisted exhibit staff with identifying legislative records that are of interest to the curators.
I have done research writing and editing for previous exhibits. I discovered that curation
was largely a transferable skill from my usual work but for significantly different audience.
In a classroom you can hand each student a facsimile of a document they can read it from
top to bottom before considering questions about it. Not so in a gallery. The document
itself must be eye catching enough to stop someone from walking right on by. And this
means I was looking documents to display from our holdings that have some significant content
related to the very complex subject of our Constitution. Each document had to be short,
simple and visually appealing which isn't always so easy to find. So what is involved
in creating an exhibit? Well, to start with you have to have an idea and you have to have
the materials with which to illustrate the idea, sometimes those two things can be like
a chicken and an egg. Should you start with the idea and see if you have the supporting
materials in your museum holdings or do you start with the materials and see if you can
poke around enough for some brilliant idea presents itself? The answer for this exhibit
I tried both. I did some research and then looked for the connecting tissue between items
and then the connecting ideas suggested new research paths I headed back to the books
for more info which then led to more ideas and so on. To make this exhibit I did a lot
of research. Here at the Archives research is one of the most fun parts of the job. Flipping
through old papers I got to discover voices and thoughts perhaps no one else still alive
even knows about. Finding that one document that really illustrates perspective or story
is really fun and very rewarding. Once I had enough research to understand the topic
well enough to identify useful National Archives documents, the co-curator of the exhibit and
I brainstormed on how to tell the story. Also one of the most fun but really difficult parts
of curating an exhibit is coming up with three or four different ways that you can tell one
story and then working through all those ideas until only one of them stands out as the best
one, and the others you discard. During this project I learned it's very important that
not all ideas are good ones but the best results come when you are not afraid to share all
the ideas good or bad and just being okay with the fact that some of them will turn
out to be unworkable. After determining the story the co-curator and I worked with a team
to construct the physical exhibit. There are a lot of different jobs that are involved
with that as well. For example, the graphic designer created all the visual images and
the look of the exhibit from the color scheme to the font style on the signs. She also helped
me focus on ensuring the information that I had researched and written about was presented
in a visually appealing manner so people would want to stop and read about it. The exhibit
designer was the person responsible for determining the physical layout of the gallery space.
He moved walls, placed lights and installed video screens and ensured every item on display
was hung in the proper place. Our museum registrar tracked every document that was pulled from
the boxes and ensured each one made it's way to the proper space in the exhibit gallery.
We also had conservators who ensured that had the documents weren't damaged and others
who is scanned the documents to make them available in our on‑line catalogs. All of
these jobs and others were basic parts of the final product. A museum exhibit about
constitutional amendments visited by hundreds of thousands of people. It was very rewarding
for me to see many of pieces of this project come together and provide value for so many.
I liked knowing my work helped people, including students like yourselves, understand something
that could have been previously murky or unclear. Because subjects like constitutional amendments
are complex museum exhibits like Amending America is one way that citizens and future
voters like yourselves can better understand them. Knowing that my work is helpful in that
way is very satisfying to me. I feel that in my work and in my public service that I
am part of the solution and that my work matters. The last part I wanted to talk to you about
today is a little bit about my own personal path to this job. The first thing to say about
that it was not linear. I did not arrive in college knowing I wanted to be a curator and
then graduate and get a job in a museum. In college I didn't declare a major until I was
required to and I doubled up on history and political science because I didn't know which
one I liked better and which one I wanted to pursue. Even after I graduated I still
didn't know what I wanted to do. After taking the year off school I enrolled in graduate
school and got a masters degree in education. I taught high school history and civics for
a while before I moved here to Washington DC and got hired at the National Archives,
so my first job here was not my dream job. It was a foot in the door job answering phones.
From inside the agency however I was able to get a better sense of the other opportunities
and I worked to get temporarily transferred to another office to the Center for Legislative
Archives where I am now and later my boss hire me permanently into the position. I certainly
didn't and couldn't have planned that career path but by continuing to investigate career
options even after I had a job I eventually ended up in the place that was the right place
for me. So if you are interested in working a museum I had a little bit of advice. One
that is you will probably need a college degree perhaps a graduate degree, a major in museum
studies or public history are good choices, internship, internship, internship, volunteer
to do the work that you later want to get paid for, an internship will help you better
understand what a job actually is and how you can market yourself to a person doing
the hiring for a job like that. An internship can also help you Understand if the job is
not the right one for you and that information is just as important as finding out about
this type of job that you do like. Another idea is to try to get experience in different
types of institutions, small organizations like a local historical society will let you
see and perhaps do a little bit of everything like the research or exhibit design or graphic
design, exhibit building and more. Also large institutions like the National Archives that
have more specialized positions where any given person is responsible for only one piece
of the pie and you work as a team to complete the project. As you all move forward and decide
where work will take you I wish you all the best of luck, thank you.
>> Good afternoon. My Name is Jessie Kratz and I am the historian of the National Archives
today I am going to talk about how federal records were stored prior to coming to the
National Archives and the creation of the National Archives and how they are stored
now. This is Robert D. W. Connor he was the first Archivist of the United States. If you
were here this morning you saw the tenth archivist of the United States David Ferriero talking
to the audience. When Connor moved to the National Archives building in the fall of
1935 the building was not finished yet and it was completely empty. This large building
didn't have it's records yet. Well, we didn't have the records where were the records? Well,
before the creation of the Archives records were stored with their various agencies that
created them or Congress or the courts. As you can see it really wasn't their priority
to keep the records safe — documents were stored in basements and attics and carriage
houses and abandoned buildings Anywhere there was room to store records. They didn't have
controlled access to the records they were subject to theft, fire, many had rodents and
rats different sorts of bugs infesting them and dust. Here you see paint splattered next
to where the records were stored to say these were not ideal conditions for records. The
National Archives was created in 1934 and their mission was really to bring in these
federal records and preserve them make them available for the public to use, so we rounded
up all the records that were stored around the various buildings in Washington DC and
put them in trucks like this and brought them to the building. Since they were stored in
varying conditions lots of times like I mentioned there were bugs and rodents they had to be
fumigated and steamed and all the infestations had to be removed before we can bring the
records in. And the carts of records were brought into the machines and all the bugs
and all the other materials were removed and then we had to clean all the records before
we can bring them into the stack area where they were eventually stored we had often times
we had people using these machines to dust the records and get rid of the materials that
were in the bugs that were within. >> Then we had staff in here to arrange the
records they had to put them in the order that they need to be in for best research.
I just mentioned stacks, stacks are where big storage rooms of shelves where we keep
our records we put them in boxes and then they are available. After they were put in
the stacks we made them available to researchers. Our first researcher was 1936. Immediately
after the building opened we had to fill it. We ran out of storage space my theme of my
talk will be how we ran out of space. Immediately in this building when you came to the elevator
floors skip there and their skip levels because the original building was designed to have
an internal courtyard. We ran out of storage space almost immediately. We filled that space
with backspace. We doubled the amount of storage we can put in our building. Immediately after
we opened and we filled that second, the second part of the building we needed to start expanding
around the country. We created what are known as federal record centers. These were huge
these are huge warehouses that store inactive federal agency records, so before we get records
of federal agencies they have to be stored first and mostly these are record that is
aren't permanent records they are temporary records for instance they are permanent records.
We established these federal record centers all over the country.Researchers realized
that there are sometimes very valuable records in these record centers they were going to
the record centers looking to research so in the 70's we created these field offices
which we have now they are basically archives all over the country, so we have our archives
in Seattle and we have them in New York and Atlanta, Forth Worth all over the place. In
the Washington DC area I said we were running out of space we built the National Archives
at College Park which is Archives 2 and moved a substantial amount of records that is were
in this building out there in the 1990's. We also have a significant amount of material
in what our former mines which are caves and in 1997 we opened our first cave. The caves
were built in the 19th and 20th century to mine limestone. There's miles an miles of
underground storage in the 1950's we were no longer mining so businesses decided to
retro fit them and create storage areas, so they are optimal for space and temperature
and humidity control we started moving our operations down to the caves. Today we have
four facilities in the Midwest they are all completely underground. One of them, the Subtropolis,
not only has, you know, plenty of room for records storage they have miles an miles of
paved roads, there's railroad tracks down there and a paint ball course and laser tag
course and they do an annual five and 10 K groundhog Day run. So there is a lot of space.
I think we are probably moving to underground facilities in the future, not only do we have
field offices all over the country in these federal record centers we maintain the Presidential
library system. FDR is the first President to have a presidential library. Basically
his idea was when he was the person who also helped create the National Archives the federal
records were really on his mind at that time there was no law or guidance for federal records
for presidential records, Presidents could do whatever they want with them, the could
destroy them and they could donate them to their alma mater, they could give them to
the Library of Congress but there was no law so President FDR decided he was going to create
the presidential library he would build it with his own funds and all his records would
be in one spot. Once it opened he would donate it and give to it to the National Archives
would run it. His idea to create this what we call presidential library. In his successors
decided it was a good idea and this was Harry Truman at the groundbreaking of his library,
said it was a great idea and so did his predecessor Herbert Hoover. So even if FDR was the first
person to have a presidential library Herbert Hoover has the oldest library. These were
all voluntary. The Presidents didn't have to give their papers to the National Archives
and let them become federal records. During the Nixon administration Congress passed legislation
requiring the President to create these presidential libraries and presidential records to become
federal records the first President to have to to abide by that was President Reagan.
President and Nancy Reagan at their library in Simi Valley, California. The most recent
of our Presidential Libraries is going to be Barack Obama's . The 44th President Barack
Obama in Chicago Illinois so basically we started with one building downtown in Washington
DC and now we have 44 buildings around the country and so people around the nation they
don't have to come to Washington DC they can do the research in their local town or the
presidential library. In just over 80 years we went from a building that was completely
empty to a building that has 13 billion sheets of paper an 600,000 reels of motion picture
film, 18 million maps and charts and architectural drawings, 400,000 sound and video records,
nine million areal photograph, 17.6 million still pictures and posters, 550,000 artifacts
and I say 20 billion electronic records but this number is out dated as I am speaking
because we are acquiring them every single day. Thank you.
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