By Denise Henderson
We want to hear from our researchers! Here’s your chance to tell us what record groups you would like to see us working on…if you were in charge!
In the last few years, the archivists working in the Textual Archives Services Division at Archives II have been involved in several large-scale processing projects. Archivists working with civil records processed and described records from RG 59, Records of the Department of State, RG 84, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, RG 60, Records of the Department of Justice, RG 65, Record of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, RG 306, Records of the U.S. Information Agency, and RG 469, Records of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Agencies. This year we’re planning on processing and describing RG 286, Records of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The Navy team is almost finished with rehousing the heavily used deck logs in RG 24, Records of the Bureau of Naval Personnel. This project also included merging the logs into fewer chronological blocks. This will facilitate record pulls and will require fewer pull slips to be filled out, which I know will be greatly appreciated by those researchers who use the deck logs on a daily basis! The Navy team is also working on getting some of the highly valuable but extremely difficult to use “Flag Files” in RG 313, Records of the Naval Operating Forces, into usable condition.
The Army team worked on RG 338, Records of the U.S. Army Operational, Tactical, and Support Organizations, and RG 472, Records of the United States Forces in Southeast Asia. These projects are ongoing and will continue this year.
While we have a list of prioritized record groups that form the basis of our work plans, they are always evolving, so if there’s a record group that you’d like us to consider adding to our plan, let us know!
NARA, Entry 56, RG 145
Records of the Agricultural Stabilziation and Conservation Service, ASCS Central Files, 1955-1984
This large collection is important for research on the federal farm bureaucracy, but the lack of finding aid and its size makes it impossible to use it well. Further, when I was at Archives II this summer, some of these boxes were growing mold or mildew. This had not yet reached the records inside, but this growth is likely to spread. I would be thrilled to hear that you are processing this collection.