This week I had the honor of laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery on behalf of all of us who work here at the National Archives and Records Administration. The invitation came from Tim Franks, Historian at Arlington, who has been a friend for many years through his research in our cemetery records. It was a special invitation because Tim knows how much I have come to love and respect that space. Early on in my time here, I walked over to Arlington and wandered the paths. It quickly became my destination for peaceful reflection and solace. Stepping ..read more

Last year, OCLC’s Rachel Frick and Merrilee Proffitt convened a group of experts, practitioners, and community members to discuss reparative and inclusive descriptive practices, tools, infrastructure, and workflows in libraries and archives. Staff from the National Archives participated and were energized by the conversations. Last week, OCLC published a report based on the convening, “Reimagine Descriptive Workflows: A Community Informed Agenda for Reparative and Inclusive Descriptive Practice.” The report helpfully frames the challenges to consider when working on inclusive and reparative me ..read more

It’s been a very good week for the 1950 Census! Our goal for the 1950 Census website was to provide a simple, intuitive site as well as bulk download capabilities for users and make it available as soon as we legally could. The National Archives’ Census team stayed up late on the evening of March 31st to launch the 1950 Census at the stroke of midnight.  Immediately, people from around the world began logging on to the 1950 Census website and downloading the records. In this first week, we have had more than one million users and more than 37 million page views on the website.  It’s ..read more

At midnight, the National Archives launched the 1950 Census website.  Staff from across the agency have been working over the past decade to prepare the records and provide them to you.  I am very proud of how their work has fulfilled our mission to make access happen.  NARA and Amazon Web Services experts working together on the night of the launch. These are just a few of the many NARA staff who have worked on the Census.  This is the first census that I make an appearance in.  Earlier this morning I I used the search tips on the homepage to locate my family:  ..read more

Numbers never tell the whole story, but they do provide insights that are useful for understanding the scope and impact of our work. Here are some of the numbers we have tracked that indicate how we have grown to make access happen, connect with customers, and maximize our value to the nation from 2010 to 2022.  When I first came to NARA, I shared with staff the great Wayne Gretsky quote, “skate to where the puck is going to be.” I asked, “Where are the people going to be online?” In 2010, it was social media. People who may never come to our buildings or even our website, could come acro ..read more

Each year, Sunshine Week honors and promotes a dialogue about the importance of open government, access to information, and unnecessary secrecy—values that are central to the mission of the National Archives and Records Administration. More than 100 years ago, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote: “Sunlight is said to be the best disinfectant. If the broad light of day could be let in upon men’s actions, it would purify them as the sun disinfects.” I like to think that we celebrate Sunshine Week every week at the National Archives.   This year, I am pleased to kick off Sunshine Week with a ..read more

The clock is ticking down to the April 1, 2022 launch of the 1950 Census and NARA staff have been buzzing with activity in preparation for the date. The Big Count National Archives Identifier 178688266, p. 15 The data for each Census is restricted for 72 years, and the earliest it may be made available for this census is April 1, 2022. And by the way, this is the first U.S. Census where I make an appearance! NARA is planning to make the Census available that day. As we work with the records, our estimates for the files get more refined. We currently estimate that the 1950 Census includes 6.57 ..read more

Over the years, NARA’s GIPHY Channel has been surprisingly popular with the public. We first launched our channel on GIPHY in 2016, not knowing if the public would be interested in this way of sharing our records. We quickly learned that we were on to something when we received nearly 32 million views that year. By the end of 2020, we had a total of 2.3 billion views. In 2021, our GIFS received another 1.7 billion views, for a cumulative total of over 4 billion views for this project and counting. This is an astonishing number that eclipses the views of our records on all of our other pla ..read more

The current administration has called on federal agencies to focus on transforming federal customer experience. In response, the National Archives is embedding customer experience initiatives and principles into the strategic goals for the agency. We are also developing an agency-wide customer experience program.  As exciting and energizing as our new efforts are, focusing on customer experience is not new to the Agency.  Cultivating public participation and access to our records has always been fundamental to our mission.  Several years ago, NARA web staff participated in the O ..read more

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility at the National Archives and Records Administration The White House recently released a government-wide Strategic Plan to Advance Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) for the federal workforce. NARA will use this plan to develop an agency-specific DEIA Strategic Plan in spring 2022. This Strategic Plan follows President Biden’s Executive Order (E.O.) 14035: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce, which directed the establishment of a systematic approach to embed DEIA in agency talent practices ..read more