When was archives gov published

Its commitment to helping the public understand the importance of its holdings has made it the nation's civic educator through its widespread education programs. Its network of presidential libraries, regional archives, and federal records centers has given the National Archives a deep reach into America, with 44 facilities in 18 states and the District of Columbia, from Atlanta to Anchorage and Boston to Los Angeles.

Roosevelt probably didn't envision such an agency, but of all the Presidents of the modern era, he was the one who was most influential in establishing the broad outlines of the agency.

But decades and decades of debate, delay, and doubt preceded his signature on June 19, The Declaration of Independence is today secure in an argon-filled aluminum and titanium encasement, with sophisticated electronic equipment monitoring the climate inside.

But in its early days, the Declaration, like many other government documents, was rolled up and unrolled frequently and transported from city to city as the capital moved or as threats warranted. No government-wide authority existed to ensure that these important records were safely preserved for posterity, and occasional fires in government facilities destroyed important early records.

Over the years, the State Department became the "unofficial" national archives for important federal documents, including the Declaration and the Constitution , which the department turned over to the Library of Congress in As the professionalization of archivists and historians occurred late in the 19th century, the calls for a national archives increased.

The American Historical Association was founded in , creating a forum for discussion about the need for a national archives and an entity around which those supporting one could coalesce. The leading figure in the fight to establish the archives was Professor J.

In , he submitted to the association a program for the systematic collection and selective publication of U.

Three years later, a plan for a "hall of records" was sent to Congress, but the lawmakers had little interest. Publication of a Guide to the Archives of the Government of the United States in Washington in helped nudge the movement for a federal archives, but there was little movement until , when a fire in the Commerce Department destroyed the census records of —raising the need for a suitable place to safely preserve the most important records of the nation.

Finally, in , Congress appropriated initial funding to build such a building. A prominent site halfway between the Capitol and the White House, along Washington's two parade routes, between Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues and Seventh and Ninth Streets was designated for the building. In President Herbert Hoover named a panel to draw up specifications for the building to guide the architect, John Russell Pope.

Ground was broken on the two-square-block area in September , and Hoover laid the cornerstone just a few weeks before his term ended in There began to rise an elegant, stately building, complete with elaborate sculptural adornment, in the neoclassical revival style.

President Herbert Hoover celebrates the laying of the building s cornerstone on February 20, Timeline of Archives history. Although there was a building under construction for a national archives, Congress had yet to create the agency itself.

Roosevelt recognized the need for a national archives when he entered office, but it was not high on his list of things to do in the first days or in his first year, as the Great Depression worsened and people were left jobless and homeless and with little hope. In time, the President put his closest political adviser, Louis Howe, on to the job of getting authorization for an archives through Congress. Although the historical community and members of Congress might have had differing views, they were quickly resolved, and Roosevelt signed legislation creating the National Archives as soon as it cleared Congress, on June 19, After all, they all well knew that the past was prologue, in this case, to a significant ending.

The "significant ending" was also a beginning, and now the institution that Jameson and others had so long fought for had the interest and attention of the President of the United States. Roosevelt would have very much to say about what the Archives would be in its early years.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was assistant secretary of the Navy, governor of New York, and President of the United States, but he also fancied himself an architect and an archivist, among many other things. Roosevelt believed, Clark wrote, that the archives should not only be the repository of "materials of lasting historical value" but also of the operational records of the federal government.

This meant that the estimates for stack space in the new building were much too low, so FDR approved the proposal to fill the planned inner courtyard of the building with additional stack space, which doubled its storage capacity. Later, after he had appointed the first Archivist of the United States, R. Connor, a North Carolina educator and historian, Roosevelt got involved in staff appointments, including suggesting that an African American be hired to deal with records pertaining to African Americans.

The first years of the National Archives were mainly ones of hiring personnel, organizing the agency, and waiting for the headquarters building to be completed. Organizational lines were drawn, position descriptions were created, and lines of authority established. Staff started moving into the building in , even though it was not officially completed until Along with the creation of the National Archives in , Congress created the National Historical Publications Commission NHPC , whose mission was to see that historical records not in the holdings of the National Archives were properly preserved.

A year later, Congress passed the Federal Register Act , which gave the Archives the job of publishing the government's rules, regulations, and orders. Even though the National Archives was now up and running in its new building, Roosevelt had not lost interest in archives and architecture. He was thinking of his post-presidency and, in the late s, during his second and what he thought was his last term, decided to build his own presidential library to house and open to the public the records of his years in the White House.

It would be built, he decided, with private funds on the grounds of his estate in Hyde Park, New York. When it was complete, it would be turned over to the federal government to run—a move that established how presidential libraries are financed and administered to this day.

Roosevelt's library opened in , but he did not enjoy a post-presidency there. Seeing war on the horizon, he ran for a third and fourth term, thus becoming the only President to have a presidential library while still in office.

Buck, who had been an assistant to Connor. At the time of Connor's resignation, the Archives staff had grown to , of whom 14 were in uniform. One of Buck's strong suits was records administration, and he became involved in all the agency's activities. It was a skill that would serve the Archives well during the war that loomed in When America went to war after the Japanese attack on December 7, , the National Archives was not high on anyone's list of vital federal agencies.

As one high-ranking Archives official wrote to Archivist Buck:. The Archives, however, had been preparing for war many months before Pearl Harbor, making plans for the safekeeping of the most important government documents, in case Washington, DC, became the target of enemy bombers.

The National Archives Building, now an imposing presence along the National Mall, seemed to be the safest building for storing records, and they poured into the Archives from all agencies for safekeeping in this "bombproof" building. The press dubbed it "Fort Archives. Archives officials estimated how many records the Archives building could accommodate, then considered more inland locations where they might send records for safekeeping.

In the end, nitrate motion picture films, highly flammable and dangerously toxic when burning, were the only records taken out of the building during the war. With the need for people in uniform, the size of the staff decreased from a high of in to by war's end.

About 60 were detailed to other agencies. Archives officials were determined to show that the agency had a valuable role to play in the war effort, even though the Archives barely made it on a list of agencies to be awarded the designation "National Defense Agency.

The Archives, moreover, had something of great value to war planners: War Department records from to —80 percent of which had been generated during World War I. It also had detailed maps of Europe as well as the Pacific, and war planners were able to use these to plan their strategic offensive against the Axis powers.

In early , the Office of Strategic Services OSS , the forerunner of today's Central Intelligence Agency, moved into the building, sealing off some areas of the building as "restricted" because of the secrecy the OSS needed as it studied maps of Europe.

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