Records Access, Research Convenience: Are You Finding It Better At NARA?

John W. Carlin

Whether you  come to us online or in person, I hope you've noticed that research is becoming more convenient at the National Archives and Records Administration. With help last year from another budget increase from the Congress and the Administration, we've done all kinds of things to try to make it so. First, those of you who use the regional archives we maintain across the country will find nine new archivists there to help you. At the same time, with assistance from volunteers, our regional archives have greatly expanded their hours of service to historians and other researchers.

We also found ways this past fiscal year in our national archives buildings in Washington, D.C., and College Park, Maryland, to provide more efficient, effective, and timely service.  These included hiring eight more reference specialists to provide research-room assistance, consolidating our finding aids in researcher-assistance areas, automating our pull-and-refile system, and describing more records in automated formats.  Also, at our two national archives facilities, we created new Customer Service Centers to enable you to communicate your needs more conveniently, while a new publication shop at College Park offers finding aids.

Already we have had some praise from researchers for these improvements, which have enabled us to meet customer-service goals despite increasingly heavy demands.

Again this past year, we made many more records available to you.

For example, we released substantially more Nixon Presidency materials to the public, which we have had to review painstakingly under legal strictures.  Moreover, we brought technical experts to Washington to see whether new technologies can re-capture whatever was "erased" from the famous eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap in the Nixon Watergate tapes.  Nothing definitive emerged, but we received guidance for exploratory steps. Also we continued our major role in identifying and helping people use thousands of valuable records in the international research effort to trace assets looted from Holocaust victims.  And we created a prototype for providing online access to the electronic databases we have of Korean and Vietnam War casualties, among other electronic records.

We also released many more declassified records, although our pace was slowed by new legislative requirements.  In its annual report to the President, the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) noted that NARA, which had led all Government agencies in declassifying documents, fell off in the number of pages declassified, but not in the amount of classification review work we performed.  New legislation required that we re-review some records, and give other records a time-consuming, page-by-page review, to be sure that they did not contain data restricted under the Atomic Energy Act.  Even so, we declassified more pages than any other Federal agency but one. We provided access to records, and to history, in other ways as well, through exhibits and special programs reaching school groups and public visitors.  Historians among you often helped us with these. For example, we successfully sponsored special historical programs, including a "Southwest Symposium" in our Southwest Region, one on Civil War medicine in our Great Lakes Region, and another on the American Presidency at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library.  And throughout our archival facilities and Presidential libraries, new historical exhibits delighted and educated the public.  These included the Kennedy Library's exhibit on President Kennedy's love of the sea, the Bush Library's exhibit on the White House Press Office, the Carter Library's exhibit on First Families, and an exhibit for the fiftieth anniversary of the Korean War that included a bunker built by staff in our Central Plains Region in Kansas City.  NARA Pacific Region staff at facilities in San Francisco and Laguna Niguel, California, provided material for a major exhibit on Chinese-American history.
Our critically-acclaimed photo exhibit, "Picturing the Century," which you can see in the National Archives Building in Washington, has been traveling the nation and will go overseas to such countries as Egypt and India.  It features photographs from our collections that capture meaningful moments from the first full century to be photographed, the twentieth century.  You and your students can view this, along with other documentary displays, in the Online Exhibit Hall at our web site <http://www.nara.gov/>.
Some of the work we did to help historians and other researchers will be more visible to you in the future.  For example, we progressed in building our Archival Research Catalog.  Eventually it will provide researchers with online access to descriptions of all the records in our holdings nationwide.   Additionally, we accelerated our preparations for processing the Clinton Administration's records, which we'll receive when the President's second term ends.  We started putting together a staff, and leased processing space in Little Rock, where the Clinton Presidential Library is planned.
We also made progress toward improving Government records management without which records you need may never reach our archives.  And of special importance is our progress in building an Electronic Records Archives to save Government's email and other electronic records for future research.  Also our progress last year in processing and preserving records has and will result in more being available for your use.
Nonetheless, we hope you will notice that all these efforts are paying off in our research rooms and online services.  With increased resources last year, we did a lot to provide more records more conveniently to you.

In other NARA News...

David E. Alsobrook to direct Clinton Presidential
Materials Project

Archivist of the United States John W. Carlin appointed David E. Alsobrook as Director of the Clinton Presidential Materials Project. Alsobrook will leave his position as Director of the George Bush Library to take on this new challenge. As Director of the Bush Presidential Materials Project, Alsobrook previously directed the transition of Bush Presidential materials from the White House to the George Bush Library. He was selected as Director of the George Bush Library in 1997. In addition to his work with the Bush materials and library, Alsobrook was liaison for NARA at the Carter White House and then spent ten years as the supervisory archivist at the Jimmy Carter Library in Atlanta, Georgia. Alsobrook will direct the Project in Little Rock, Arkansas, at a temporary facility where all records and the head-of-state and domestic gifts of the Clinton presidency will be stored pending construction of the Clinton Library. The Clinton historical materials include more than 75 million pages of official and personal papers, 1,850,000 photographs, and 75,000 presidential gifts.