SHAFR Archival Records Sharing Group
April 23, 2020

Dear Colleagues,

Given the current travel restrictions and the closing of archives due to Covid-19, SHAFR is sponsoring an archival records sharing group, moderated by James Stocker and Karine Walther. This space provides an area for scholars to share and request specific archival documents. We are hopeful that this can serve as an important resource, particularly for graduate students and junior scholars, who have been prevented from accessing key archival sources for their work. To ensure that there are enough people who can also share information, we encourage advanced professors to join and share their own digitized copies.

Current members have already begun sharing resources from a variety of archives, including the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the British National Archives, and several presidential libraries (Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan). Members have also shared archival sources from foreign archives as well as the private archives of religious organizations. All members who share digital copies of archival material are asked to adhere to any restrictions imposed by individual archives. Moderators will remove posts that include requests for documents from archives or collections found to have prohibitions on sharing photographs.  The group can be accessed through the following link: https://groups.google.com/a/shafr.org/forum/#!forum/archival-docs/join. We ask scholars to identify their names and affiliations when requesting to join the group.

Please help us get the word out to graduate students, colleagues, independent scholars, and contingent faculty working on U.S. foreign relations.

Karine Walther and James Stocker