By Alfie Paul Tomorrow we are all Irish. So, to celebrate St. Patirck's Day I had a look around our holdings to see how The Text Message could celebrate Eire. As always I used our Online Public Access (OPA) system and found some expected things: Consular records in RG 84 (Records of the Foreign Service Posts … Continue reading Irish American Heroes
By M. Marie Maxwell Several months ago, as part of a processing project relating to Record Group 516: Records of the Federal Judicial Center, 1967 - 1994, I did a little research on a woman named Alice L. O’Donnell. In the Archives Research Catalog, also known as ARC, a researcher can, according to the Archives.Gov … Continue reading Finding Alice
Today's post is written by Amber Thiele, a processing archivst with civilian textual records in College Park. Sometimes while processing textual records you find something that makes you think, "hmmm…this would get more use if it was in another part of the National Archives and Records Administration." Usually in the Textual Archives Services Division, this … Continue reading Transferring records
To assist researchers interested in records of the Department of State and other foreign affairs agencies, the most heavily used records in the National Archives, the Textual Archives Services Division has launched a newly revamped set of pages on the Archives' website for providing an introduction to foreign affairs records. The conduct of foreign affairs … Continue reading Launch of new web pages on Foreign Affairs records
As Black History Month draws to a close, nothing illustrates the great progress of the civil rights movement more than a glimpse at a bleaker era. The work we do every day at the National Archives is for the express purpose of preserving historical context, even the disturbing parts, as exemplified in today’s post, written … Continue reading That Cognac Can Get You Into Very, Very Bad Trouble!
Today's post is by Alan Walker, a processing archivist at Archives II. As a kid I was captivated by the sinking of the RMS Titanic. The drama of such a man-made behemoth falling victim to an iceberg and the scope of the human tragedy conspired to trigger the imaginations of this impressionable youth. I read … Continue reading Browsing, Serendipity, and a Titanic Discovery
Today's post is written by Liz Caringola, who works on our ancestry.com digitization project. February 22, 2012, marks the 25th anniversary of the death of American pop artist Andy Warhol. The Pittsburgh native rose to fame in the 1960s as one of the most prominent members of the American pop art movement. He remained a … Continue reading Remembering Andy through the Archives
Today's post is written by Aaron Mannes, a citizen researcher from the University of Maryland's Laboratory of Computational Cultural Dynamics. He is a doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy who is writing a dissertation on the national security role of the vice president. If you have a lot of time … Continue reading From a researcher’s perspective
By Alfie Paul Presidents Day is celebrated in honor of the birthday of our first president, George Washington, who was born February 22nd. But what if he was not actually the first President of the nation? What if we celebrated this holiday in April instead? When all of the states ratified the Articles of Confederation … Continue reading President’s/Presidents’/Presidents Day?
By Jason Clingerman Given the recent appearance of the development company Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI) in the news regarding the case of Alan Gross, the development worker who was jailed in Cuba in 2009 accused of working for U.S. intelligence services, I thought it would be worthwhile to mention that records relating to development projects … Continue reading Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI)
