1) Our Story: How the National Archives Evolved Over 75 Years of Change and Challenges

The chief executive gave his 131st press conference, but made little news. Then he held a cabinet meeting, met with a number of individual lawmakers, and left just before midnight for an overnight trip to New Haven, Connecticut, where the next day he would receive an honorary degree at Yale University.

Congress had adjourned the day before and left him with many bills to sign. One of them created the Federal Communications Commission. Another was an emergency appropriations bill. Yet another one dealt with how the Post Office should deal with letters with no or insufficient postage.

Sometime during the day, he also signed legislation creating the National Archives, whose massive headquarters in downtown Washington, DC, was already rising along Pennsylvania Avenue.

The idea of a national archives, a repository for the most important records of the nation, had been debated in and out of Congress for decades. Now, finally, legislation creating that entity had arrived at the President’s desk after the nation, already more than a century and a half old, had lost many of its early records to fires, mishandling, improper storage, and other natural and man-made events

2) Reflecting on the Archives’ growth into a world class archives
Adrienne Thomas, Acting Archivist of the United States, discusses the growth of the National Archives during the past 75 years.

Source: Prologue (Summer 2009)

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