NARA II at NARA II

So I spent a couple of days in the Washington D.C. area again this week. It was a training/general followup visit, and as always it was tremendously helpful to be out here on the ground. As before I won't get into the business details of the trip, but I do want to share a few stories I picked up at NARA (National Archives and Records Administration). NARA really is a fabulous place because even if you are not really into history (me) you run into stuff that is so cool and so real that history kind of comes alive. So here are a few stories and pictures from my week. DISCLAIMER: These are all unofficial comments and pictures and not NARA publications. I tried to remember in most situations to ask before taking pictures, but overall I am surprised and pleased that NARA is generally not opposed to photography.



The Stacks. Most records are stored in controlled, but not entirely unusual rooms referred to as The Stacks. This concept made a lot more sense to me when I toured the American Antiquarian Society, as there were a number of large stacks of documents, but at NARA the room I got to go in was just a big room with really cool moving shelves. Each shelf was full of boxes of documents with labels saying what was in them. Since this is just my blog, I don't feel bad about saying that I am EXTREMELY disappointed in NARA's organization. Even in our company we have the ability to track a book or box of documents to the exact room and shelf where they are. Nara has no such system. They can't query a database and tell you where a certain set of records are. The best they can do is teach their people how the system SHOULD work and then turn them loose to find customer requests. What an opportunity lost. Ok, that was my disappointment for the trip. The rest of this is about the cool things NARA has and does.



So this is a facsimile copy of the Declaration of Independence. We only peeked, so I just stuck my camera in and shot the best picture I could get. It was cool. I don't know if you can read it, but at the bottom of the page protruding from beneath the top document is the signature of William Ellery. He was one of the signers of the Declaration, and I hear that there is an awesome exhibit about him in Philadelphia. Just something else to add to the list of things to do if you are ever in Philly.

This is obviously a shot of Abraham Lincoln's signature, pulled from a handwritten letter that was hundreds of years old and in remarkable condition.
The conservationist was able to fold it an unfold it like it was yesterday's newspaper. I learned that the difference was the quality of the paper, and that there are paper quality standards even today for any official document that comes from the White House. They want those documents to last.

Now this is one of my favorite stories. I guess that during World War II there were a handful (6?) German saboteurs that secretly landed at different site on the Eastern shore of the US. They came ashore in German uniforms, but immediately changed into American duds and buried their belongings in the beach. They were soon found out and caught, and the US government went back and dug up their stuff for proof to the world as to what happened. Everything found that belonged to those men was preserved, and this picture is of some of their personal clothing. There was a whole stack of boxes of this stuff, but we just got to look into the top one. The weird perspective of the picture is because I had to hold my camera over my head to get a decent shot. Sorry. On a different table they were piecing together a newspaper from 1943 (or was it 42? I don't remember) that had also been among their belongings. You might be wondering why these items were at the archives instead of a museum, and for that I will give the best description of NARA's purpose that I can, although it will be inadequate.

So all of our government agencies are out there producing documents. Those documents, or at least some of them, need to be preserved for either a set period of time or indefinitely. So the National Archives and Records Administration has the task of taking only the most important of those documents after a period of time and having them preserved for long-term use by the public and others. The room I took a picture of above was almost completely dedicated to records from the State Department. I think that only about 5% of all documents that are important enough to be stored by their respective agency are important enough to come to NARA. Right now NARA is over 1 million cubic feet behind in processing all of the newly arrived documents, and as time moves on, more documents come of age and are moved. As I mentioned, NARA is also responsible to see that the public has access to those documents that they are entitled to. Like many other organizations, I get the feeling that they are often struggling to really figure out the best way to implement new technology in their situation. The inventory control issue mentioned above is one such example.

So back to the German invaders: Those items are at NARA because they are evidence that was held by the government, not just cool antiquities. While NARA can not handle all of the issues that might arise out of artifacts such as those, they can handle many of them and being in the D.C. area means that they have all of the experts needed close at hand.

So I also got to visit the vault. This is where even more valuable and rare documents are kept. The door is bigger, heavier and the lock is fancier. I got to see the surrender document of the Japanese in World War II, as well as the birth certificate, final will and other personal papers of Adolf Hitler. Those had been mounted on tough pages and bound into a hardcover book by the British for use in the Nuremberg trials. The book had metal hinges and just a simple "AH" embossed on the cover. After the trials the British government gifted the artifact to the US in show of gratitude for US assistance. Hitler's signature was small and unimpressive, barely bigger than the type on the page. Weird.

Being a Disney nut I was excited to see the Disney company's contribution to the war effort. Their contribution was in the form of two stylized cartoon characters meant to be logos/mascots for various military regiments. They were cool to see (complete with Walt's signature) but they were definitely off limits to my camera. Disney was smart from day one and I don't think he relinquished rights to anything he ever produced. In the the early forties he licensed those images to the government. Brilliant.

So those are a few highlights from my trip. As I said, it was educational, both from a business standpoint and in a personal sense. Being back east makes both history in general more real and our country's heritage more meaningful.