Please join us for a Washington History Seminar Panel with Ada Ferrer on Cuba: An American History.

In July 2021, the National Archives announced the establishment of NARA’s Reparative Description and Digitization Working Group (RDDWG), implementing a key recommendation of the Archival Description Subgroup within the Archivist’s Task Force on Racism (NARA Notice 2021-184). Since then, the RDDWG has been meeting regularly and work has begun under NARA’s framework for implementing Executive Order (E.O.) 13985, Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, as described in NARA Notice 2021-162.

Reparative archival description aims to remediate or contextualize potentially outdated or harmful language used in archival description and to create archival description that is accurate, inclusive, and community-centered.

The RDDWG has been reviewing guidance, standards, and processes relating to reparative archival description as well as benchmarking the work of peer institutions. Recently, the RDDWG developed Guiding Principles for Reparative Description at NARA. There are six guiding principles, dealing with:

1. Transparency
2. Language
3. Institutional change
4. Collaboration
5. Iterative/reflective process
6. Leadership

The attached document describes each principle in detail.

The RDDWG will use these principles to ensure that decisions around standards and processes are in alignment with the NARA’s vision for reparative description and equity.

These principles will guide the efforts of the Working Group as they begin to draft agency guidance for identifying and updating harmful language in current Catalog descriptions and authority records, and for agency-wide reparative descriptive practices going forward.

NARA’s reparative description efforts are in keeping with the efforts of numerous other institutions in the archival community. Library and Archives Canada addresses reparative description in action item 17 of their Indigenous Heritage Action Plan. Reparative description is discussed throughout the Society of American Archivists archival description blog: Descriptive Notes. The University Archives and Special Collections in the Healy Library at the University of Massachusetts Boston posted a statement on reparative description. The Princeton University Library hosts a description working group to describe collections respectfully. Tufts University provides a listing of additional reading on this issue. The Cataloging Lab provides a long list of statements on bias in library and archives description.

These are just a few examples of the many archives that are focusing on reparative description. I am proud that NARA is one among them.


DAVID S. FERRIERO
Archivist of the United States

Archivist of the United States David Ferriero has announced his retirement effective mid-April 2022.

After 12 years as the 10th Archivist of the United States, I have decided to retire, effective mid-April 2022.

As I wrote to President Biden, it has been the honor of a lifetime to serve my country once more, this time to lead the Executive Branch agency charged with ensuring that the American people can hold their government accountable and learn from the past by accessing the records of our country. My time here has been filled with opportunities, challenges, and awesome responsibilities. Over the past several months, as I contemplated retirement and reflected on my time with you, I am humbled and awestruck and so deeply grateful—grateful to all of you.

I’m extraordinarily proud of what we have accomplished together during my tenure and hope that you too take pride in our efforts and results.

We have become a leader in the government’s transition to a digital future, electronic records management, and the principles of Open Government. We’ve served our customers in new and innovative ways, including increasing public access and engagement through the online catalog and social media; streamlining how we serve veterans; expanding access to museums, exhibits, and public programs in person and virtually; and establishing civic literacy initiatives. We’ve fostered strong relationships with partner organizations, and increased outreach to traditional and new stakeholders. Throughout, we’ve put the customer at the center of all that we do.

I’ve said many times that our employees are the real treasures of the National Archives.

I’ve tried to serve you well by fostering a collaborative approach to leadership and engaging you in sustained efforts to build a positive workplace culture that values creativity, civility, openness, diversity, and inclusion.

As Archivist, I’ve had the pleasure and honor to work with a team of highly talented and committed leaders at all levels of this agency in delivering transformational initiatives, improving our organizational effectiveness, and, most importantly, keeping you safe during this pandemic while still carrying out our responsibilities. I am confident that they will continue to work together and with the next Archivist to support you and the work of the agency.

It is not easy to leave you with our important work continuing, especially initiatives to foster equity and enhance the employee and customer experiences. However, our profession is one of stewardship, where despite our enduring responsibilities, we are here for what amounts to a brief period of time. We have come a long way since 1934, and we have made great strides in the last 12 years, but the need for thoughtful and deliberate progress and transformation remains. As the Archivist of the United States, I know that you will build on our work together in ways I cannot imagine. As a citizen and veteran, I am thankful that you will continue the noble work of the National Archives and Records Administration with skill, passion, and resiliency.

Deputy Archivist Debra Steidel Wall will serve as Acting Archivist until the President nominates and the Senate confirms my successor.

On January 8, 2022, SHAFR announced a number of awards at its luncheon at the American Historical Association conference in New Orleans.  These awards recognize some of the best emerging scholars in our field.  We are now happy to share those announcements with the rest of our community.

The Graduate Student Grants & Fellowships Committee–Sam Lebovic (chair), Kate Burlingham, and Hiroshi Kitamura–made the following awards to more than a dozen graduate students:

Appalling Ocean, Verdant Land: America and the Sea
ASANOR Conference 2022
American Studies Association of Norway
29 September – 1 October
Bodø, Norway

The 2022 ASANOR conference will be held at Nord University from September 29 to October 1 We welcome papers from a wide range of fields, including literature, history, political science, linguistics, and cultural studies, that explore the role of the sea in the American experience

Everyone,

Those of you who monitor proposed records schedules in the Federal Register may be interested in a change NARA is piloting in response to a request from schedule commenters. We made this change in the hope of making it easier to see which schedules are included in a Federal Register notice.

CONFERENCE COORDINATOR

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS 

Making and Breaking Global Order in the Twentieth Century (14 – 15 October 2022)

Across the twentieth century, ideas about the global order have sparked a furious debate amongst scholars seeking to understand its power dynamics, structures, institutions, organisation and systems. The majority of the discussion has been centred around the role of states as critical to shaping the workings of the system of international relations and the horizon of peace and security. There has however been an inherent tendency to uphold conventional turning points such as the two World Wars, the Cold War and the North-South divide. We aim to go beyond these traditional understandings and rather focus on the institutions, nations, and often forgotten actors who were full participants alongside Great Powers in shaping the norms, systems and practices that make up global order. At the centre of our enquiry are the role of traditionally disenfranchised or marginalised actors of the Global South, including states, nations, transnational groups, regional organisations, trade union representatives, transnational corporations, activists, agitators and a host of other non-state actors. We also seek to probe the ways in which the different levels of global order interacted in organisations, especially the League of Nations and the United Nations and their associated agencies and systems. There has been a surge of recent scholarship dealing with the legacies and functions of these institutions of international order, and we wish to expand the actors, events, and narratives that play featured roles in the history of 20th century international institutional and organisational transformation.

The Julian Chin Ph.D. Fellowship in Cybersecurity will enable students to follow in the footsteps of Mr. Chin, renowned for solving the most challenging technical problems facing the national security community.  He was called upon over his career to unravel the most difficult problems and vexing issues for the intelligence community, technical collection systems developed and guided by his expertise and troubleshooting skills decades ago are still making a difference today for our nation.  Fellows earning this opportunity will be expected to exhibit traits that Mr. Chin embodied, which was high technical competence, motivation, efficiency, and thoroughness, and above all else strong collaboration and teambuilding skills.

Please join us for a Washington History Seminar Panel with Vladislav Zubok on Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union.

More Department of State Records Now Available Online: Diplomatic Instructions, 1785-1906 & Consular Instructions, 1801-1834

November 18, 2021 By Ncurrie, Posted In Digital Projects, Finding Aids, State And Foreign Affairs

Today’s post was written by David Langbart, archivist in Textual Reference at the National Archives at College Park, MD.

The National Archives is pleased to announce that more records of the Department of State have been digitized and are now available online through the National Archives Catalog.  This is the fourth in a series of occasional posts.  It is the final post describing the records that constitute the “central files” of the Department for the period from 1789 to 1906.  The first post described the microfilm digitization project and the first foreign affairs records made available through it.

A Letter from the Archivist on reopening research rooms at the National Archives. 

John J. Sbrega, "An Intellectual Dilemma and Tragedy: Social Darwinism, Pragmatism, and the Industrialization of the American Dream During the Latter Half of the Nineteenth Century," The Journal of American Culture, Volume 44:2 (June 2021), 130-147.

Please join us for a Washington History Seminar Panel with Mary E. Sarotte on Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate.

The National Archives has announced its facility reopening plan:

NARA Reentry and Post-Reentry Plan [PDF]

Please join us for a Washington History Seminar Panel with Benjamin Young on Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader: North Korea and the Third World.

Please join us for a Washington History Seminar Panel with Benjamin Young on Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader: North Korea and the Third World.

Department of State Records Now Available Online: Despatches from Special Agents, Notes to Foreign Missions, and Notes from Foreign Consuls, 1789-1906

Today’s post was written by David Langbart, archivist in Textual Reference at the National Archives at College Park, MD.

The National Archives is pleased to announce that more records of the Department of State have been digitized and are now available online through the National Archives Catalog.  This is the third in a series of occasional posts.  The first post described the microfilm digitization project and the first foreign affairs records made available through it.  The second post is about consular despatches.