#8! Thanks Tumblarians!
You told LJ about over 390 of your favorite Tumblrs. Here they are, from most to least popular:
- thelifeguardlibrarian, with 29 mentions
- libraryjournal, with 16 mentions
- fishingboatproceeds, with 13 mentions (sorry John Green, Kate & LJ won this battle)
- librarianproblems, with nine mentions
- nypl, with six mentions
- oupacademic
- schoollibraryjournal
- todaysdocument
- motherjones, with five mentions
- neil-gaiman
- slaughterhouse90210
- theatlantic
- theparisreview
- therumpus
- betterbooktitles, with four mentions
- bookriot
- chicagopubliclibrary
- darienlibrary
- doctorwho
- edwardspoonhands
- ilovecharts
- johndarnielle
- laura-in-libraryland
- libraryadvocates
- mentalflossr
- nprfreshair
- shortformblog
- theartofgooglebooks
- unypl
- wilwheaton
From May 22 to 31, the digital collection of the USCT Service Records will be free on www.Fold3.com.
On May 22, 1863, the War Department issued General Orders 143, establishing a Bureau of Colored Troops in the Adjutant General’s Office to recruit and organize African American soldiers to fight for the Union Army. With this order, all African American regiments were designated as United States Colored Troops (USCT).
Today marks the 150th anniversary of the USCT, and the National Archives is pleased to announce the completion of the USCT Service Records Digitization Project. In partnership with Fold3, the project provides online access to all service records—more than 3.8 million images—of Union volunteers in USCT units.
Remember: All National Archives collections on Fold3.com can always be viewed for free at a computer at any National Archives facility nationwide.
The photo and paperwork above come from the compiled military service records of former slave Edmund Delaney. Read his story on the Prologue blog.
On this day in history, Warner Brothers’ classic film - the Adventures of Robin Hood - debuted 75 years ago in 1938. It was the most expensive film that Warner Brothers had produced to-date with extravagant sets and costumes, multiple film locations, and the utilization of a new color movie-making process called Technicolor. The Adventures of Robin Hood tells the legendary tale of the Sherwood Forest bandit who fought oppression against a tyrannical government with good-cheer and principled determination. Starring Errol Flynn as Robin Hood and Olivia de Havilland as Maid Marian, it became an instant hit and arguably remains the most definitive cinematic version of Robin Hood ever filmed.
The National Archives at Riverside celebrates the 75th anniversary of the movie’s release by showcasing Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland’s naturalization records from Record Group 21 – Records of the U.S. District Courts. Errol Flynn was born in Hobart, Australia in 1909 while Olivia de Havilland was born in Tokyo, Japan to British parents in 1916. The U.S. District Court of Los Angeles granted Flynn and de Havilland U.S. citizenship in the early 1940s. Aside from the Adventures of Robin Hood, Flynn and de Havilland made eight other movies together, including Captain Blood in 1935 and Santa Fe Trail in 1940.
The National Archives at Riverside maintains thousands of naturalization records for foreign-born residents who attained U.S. citizenship in southern California, Arizona, and Clark County, Nevada through the year 1991. For more information on our holdings, please feel free to contact us!
National Archives’ online catalog down for maintenance May 10-25, 2013
The National Archives’ Online Public Access (OPA) system will be down for maintenance from May 10 to May 25, 2013. We are in the process of rolling out a new version of OPA that will bring the catalog up to date. After the updated system is rolled out, the catalog will be updated on a weekly basis. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience as we work to improve the system! You may wish to use the Archival Research Catalog (ARC) for your research during this period of downtime. The descriptions or catalog records will be available in ARC, although all digital images in ARC will be unavailable for this period. Please check out OPA after May 25th!
via NARAtions » Online Public Access catalog down for maintenance May 10-25, 2013
(You’ll have to excuse us if the frequency of our posts decreases for a bit. We may even have to rerun a post from last year.)
Happy Public Service Recognition Week!
Yesterday we celebrated the accomplishments of National Archives staff across the country in our annual Archivist’s Awards ceremony.
We created a little internal fanfare yesterday by recognizing staff for protecting and recovering stolen records, for outstanding service and support of our nation’s veterans, for achievement in engaging our citizens, for developing the Presidential Memorandum and Directive on Managing Government Records, for efforts to increase National Declassification Center production, to name just a few of awards tied closely to our Transformation pillars.
We also celebrated long term service milestones of 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 and 45 years!
For me, every week is Public Service Recognition Week and I take great pride every day in the work that my staff does. Each member of the National Archives staff plays a vital role in fulfilling our mission of collecting, protecting, and making access happen. Congratulations to each one of you!
Read the full post on the AOTUS blog
It’s always Teacher Appreciation Week at the National Archives!
Our Education Specialists work year-round to provide teachers with free resources for teaching with primary sources. From DC to our National Archives and Presidential Library locations around the country, we create and share lesson plans, learning activities, field trip and professional development opportunities, and multimedia and web content. Our new blog is the best way to stay up-to-date on our latest resources. So far we’ve included posts about the Common Core Standards, document spotlights, online tools, partner organizations, professional development, free programs, research tips, and of course teaching activities and lesson plans from our online site for teaching with documents, DocsTeach.org.
- Find our Education Updates Blog at http://blogs.archives.gov/education/ and subscribe via email.
And follow education resources from the National Archives at:
Happy Teacher Appreciation Week! This week on the National Archives Education page, we’re featuring teachers at work.
This class photo of a teacher posed with her students in front of their sod schoolhouse in Woods County, in the Oklahoma Territory, was taken about 1895. How many students do you count?
(Image: Teacher and children in front of sod schoolhouse. Woods Co., Okla. Terr., ca. 1895. From the Records of the Office of the Secretary of the Interior. National Archives Identifier: 516448. http://docsteach.org/documents/516448/detail) — at Woods County, Oklahoma.
BLACK FAMILY ENJOYING THE SUMMER WEATHER AT CHICAGO’S 12TH STREET BEACH ON LAKE MICHIGAN. FROM 1960 TO 1970 THE PERCENTAGE OF CHICAGO BLACKS WITH AN INCOME OF $7,000 OR MORE JUMPED FROM 26 TO 58%. MEDIAN BLACK INCOME DURING THE PERIOD INCREASED FROM $4,700 TO $7,883, BUT THE DOLLAR GAP BETWEEN THEIR GROUP AND THE WHITES ACTUALLY WIDENED, 08/1973
From the Records of the Environmental Protection Agency (12/02/1970-)
Source: http://go.usa.gov/T3WT
Earlier today, the National Archives in Washington, DC hosted Jimmie Walker the actor who played J.J. Evans in the 1970s television show Good Times and the author of Dynomite!: Good Times, Bad Times and Our Times- A Memoir.
Watch the archived webcast here: http://www.ustream.tv/usnationalarchives
Moon Tongs
This Saturday, The National Archives and its Presidential Libraries will be at the National Air and Space Museum’s annual Space Day.
We’ll be hosting activities including:
- A Mission Checklist hunt for Apollo-related items at the National Archives and the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
- A Presidential Pop Quiz on U.S. Presidents and the Space Program.
Want a head start on your Mission Checklist? These Moon Tongs were used by Apollo mission astronauts to collect lunar samples.
The tongs are from the holdings of the Nixon Presidential Library and can be seen for a limited time in the “Nixon and the U.S. Space Program” display at the National Archives in D.C.
Sometimes it seems like that commentary is missing on your end though, and since you’re the govt it’s reinforcing troubling normative whitewashed history. Lots of us are critical thinkers but a lot of people have never heard a competing narrative!
That’s actually deliberate. As the National Archives, our role is to preserve & make these records—the raw materials of history—available to the public. Speaking very generally, commentary and interpretation goes beyond our mandate, especially as a non-partisan Federal Agency. If there’s background information that accompanies the record we’ll include it, and may add any necessary context. But in general we try to stick to the basic facts and let the records speak for themselves (and on Tumblr that usually works surprisingly well).
Thanks for writing!
Well that’s an upsetting primary source.
While this comment was in reference to this morning’s letter requesting the National Guard’s assistance at Kent State, you could probably say that about many of our posts. But these comments are an opportunity we hate to miss. Sometimes history is upsetting (a lot of the time, actually). This is probably a good time to mention our post from last year:
“All the documents of “homesteaders” stealing land from Native Americans is bumming me out.”
In short, if you’re not bummed out sometimes by our posts, then we’re probably not doing our job.
But to make up for it, maybe you missed our post from Bugs Bunny’s sort-of-75th birthday?
And thanks for writing!
Jimmie Walker got his start performing comedy in small clubs, and ultimately became a 1970s icon playing J.J. Evans on Good Times.
Walker will be talking about his memoir at the National Archives on Friday, May 3, at noon.
He was the first successful young black sitcom star, and his catchphrase—“Dyn-o-mite!”—remains an indicator of the era. In Dynomite!, Walker talks candidly about his rise and the tensions on the set of Good Times that contradict the show’s image of a close-knit blue-collar family.
A book signing will follow the program.
Don’t miss the National Archives at Riverside’s series of odes to their volunteers, for Volunteer Appreciation Week (also Poetry Month!):
To our Wednesday volunteers…
Thanks for putting up with us,
Survey all 60,000 feet without making any fuss.
Court dockets, land files and Naval records plus,
helping us whenever - caring for records covered in schmutz.
To Melissa and Gloria,
you are appreciated and your presence calms our historia.…in the spirit of Volunteer Appreciation Week (April 21-27, 2013)
Each change of Presidential administration requires a massive move of records and materials.
The George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum holds more than 70 million pages of textual records, 43,000 artifacts, 200 million emails (totaling roughly 1 billion pages), and 4 million digital photographs (the largest holding of electronic records of any of our libraries).
Collecting this material, cataloging and processing it, and making it available to the public was a task that began on January 20, 2009.
Read more about how National Archives staff got it all done on the Prologue blog.
Image: This moving van was outside the White House on January 20, 1993. From the Clinton Presidential Library.
George W. Bush Presidential Center Dedication
Today the National Archives and Records Administration will dedicate the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The facility will open to the public on May 1.
The Bush Library is the 13th of NARA’s federally owned Presidential libraries, whose holdings span eight decades of American history. It also increases our presence in Texas, where we already operate the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, George H.W. Bush’s library in College Station, and our regional archives and records center in Fort Worth.
We look forward to developing partnerships with the George W. Bush Presidential Center and with SMU to present joint programming, share our expertise, draw on our holdings, and bring together SMU’s academic departments and the library. These kinds of partnerships at the 12 other Presidential libraries have enriched the learning experience for students and scholars.
The new Bush Library holds 70 million pages of textual records, 40,000 artifacts (mainly gifts to the Bushes), four million photographs, and 80 terabytes of electronic information – including 200 million emails of about five pages each, or one billion pages.
Read the full post on the AOTUS blog.
