The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an independent agency of the United States government charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It is also tasked with increasing public access to those documents which make up the National Archive. NARA is officially responsible for maintaining and publishing the legally authentic and authoritative copies of acts of Congress, presidential directives, and federal regulations. NARA also transmits votes of the Electoral College to Congress.
An archive is an accumulation of historical records or the physical place they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime, and are kept to show the function of that person or organization. Professional archivists and historians generally understand archives to be records that have been naturally and necessarily generated as a product of regular legal, commercial, administrative, or social activities. They have been metaphorically defined as "the secretions of an organism", and are distinguished from documents that have been consciously written or created to communicate a particular message to posterity.
In the United States, the presidential library system is a nationwide network of 13 libraries administered by the Office of Presidential Libraries, which is part of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). These are repositories for preserving and making available the papers, records, collections and other historical materials of every president of the United States from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush. In addition to the library services, museum exhibitions concerning the presidency are displayed.
The Archivist of the United States is the official overseeing the operation of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The first Archivist, R.D.W. Connor, began serving in 1934, when the National Archives was established as an independent federal agency by Congress. The Archivists served as subordinate officials of the General Services Administration from 1949 until the National Archives and Records Administration became an independent agency again on April 1, 1985. The position is held by David Ferriero, who was named to the office in 2009.
Allen Weinstein was an American historian, educator, and federal official who served in several different offices. He was, under the Reagan administration, cofounder of the National Endowment for Democracy in 1983. He served as the Archivist of the United States from February 16, 2005, until his resignation on December 19, 2008. After his resignation, he returned to the International Foundation for Electoral Systems as a senior strategist and was a visiting faculty member at the University of Maryland.
Trudy Huskamp Peterson in Palo Alto County, Iowa, was the Acting Archivist of the United States from March 25, 1993 to May 29, 1995. She was the first woman to ever hold the position.
The Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) is responsible to the President for policy and oversight of the government-wide security classification system and the National Industrial Security Program in the United States. The ISOO is a component of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and receives policy and program guidance from the National Security Council (NSC).
The United States Census of 1940, conducted by the Census Bureau, determined the resident population of the United States to be 132,164,569, an increase of 7.3 percent over the 1930 population of 122,775,046 people. The census date of record was April 1, 1940. A number of new questions were asked including where people were 5 years before, highest educational grade achieved, and information about wages. This census introduced sampling techniques; one in 20 people were asked additional questions on the census form. Other innovations included a field test of the census in 1939. This was the first census in which every state (48) had a population greater than 100,000.
Robert M. Warner was an American historian who served as the Sixth Archivist of the United States at the National Archives, from 1980 to 1985.
James Berton "Bert" Rhoads served as fifth Archivist of the United States. He was born in Sioux City, Iowa. Rhoads received his B.A., in 1950, and M.A., in 1952, from the University of California at Berkeley. He earned his Ph.D. in History from American University in Washington, DC in 1965.
David Sean Ferriero is a librarian, library administrator, and the 10th Archivist of the United States. He was Director of the New York Public Library, and before that, the University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs at Duke University. Prior to his Duke position, he worked for 31 years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology library. Ferriero is the first librarian to serve as Archivist of the United States.
Adrienne C. Thomas is the former acting Archivist of the United States. She assumed the position of Acting Archivist when the ninth Archivist, Allen Weinstein, announced his resignation on December 7, 2008, effective December 19. Weinstein explained that he was resigning for health reasons. In 2018 it came to light that Weinstein's departure from the position was the result of pressure after an investigation found credible reports that he sexually assaulted and/or harassed six female employees. She was succeeded by David Ferriero, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on November 6, 2009, as the tenth Archivist of the United States. After 40 years with the National Archives, Ms. Thomas retired on April 1, 2011.
The Electronic Records Archives (ERA) is a program of the United States National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to preserve electronic records as part of the U.S. government's broader records management process. The program began in 1998 and started to accept records in 2008. As of 2017, NARA was working to overhaul the system in an effort called "ERA 2.0."
The Richard Nixon Foundation is a not-for-profit organization based at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California. It was founded in August 1983 by Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States, and served as the governing body of the Nixon Library for nearly twenty years. Today it operates the Nixon Library in conjunction with the National Archives and Records Administration, which is an entity of the federal government of the United States, in addition to undertaking charitable and education-based activities.
Archival research is a type of research which involves seeking out and extracting evidence from archival records. These records may be held either in collecting institutions, such as libraries and museums, or in the custody of the organization that originally generated or accumulated them, or in that of a successor body. Archival research can be contrasted with (1) secondary research, which involves identifying and consulting secondary sources relating to the topic of enquiry; and (2) with other types of primary research and empirical investigation such as fieldwork and experiment.
Virginia Cardwell Purdy was an American archivist and historian at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). She was a Fellow of the Society of American Archivists and an editor of the journal The American Archivist (1978–1980).
Claudine Jackson Weiher served as Acting Deputy Archivist of the United States from 1986 to 1987 and Deputy Archivist of the United States from 1988 to 1993.
Dr. Sara Dunlap Jackson was an American archivist. She was one of the first African American employees of the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C., where she specialized in military history.
The organization of the National Archives and Records Administration refers to the administrative and bureaucratic structure of the National Archives and Records Administration of the United States. The National Archives is considered an independent federal government agency, receiving this status in 1985 after existing under the General Services Administration since the National Archives' founding in 1934.
Congressional archives consist of records and personal papers that document the history and activities of the United States Congress. The National Archives and Records Administration’s Center for Legislative Archives collects and preserves the official administrative and legislative records of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. The personal papers of individual senators and representatives, broadly called congressional collections, are the private property of members of Congress. Many members choose to donate their papers to repositories where their records are preserved and made available to the public.
