Monday, November 02, 2009
Monday
It's the start of another week and I'm certainly glad daylight savings time is over. It was too dark too late in the morning. We're finally having some great fall days and I wore myself out working outside yesterday. We've had so much rain that there hasn't been the opportunity to make steady progress on the outside work.
I spent two days at the Eisenhower Library last week. There were newly released documents (or at least critical parts of documents) and I also discovered a new big topic to investigate after I finish the current one. I'm actually pretty excited about given that I can do such a much better job this time around. I had taken teachers to the Ike Library a few years ago but otherwise it had been over a decade since I had researched there. But I was looking at some of the same collections with new and much more experienced eyes and felt much more efficient. This is the part of my job I've missed - doing my work and not scrambling to get material together for teachers that they sometimes use and sometimes don't.
I'm headed to a national meeting and looking forward to engaging with colleagues from a variety of disciplines. I'll be in DC again in a month so there isn't the push to see and do everything in the evenings there normally is. I'm headed up early so that I can get out to Archives II to meet with the Assistant Archivist who was responsible for my appointment to the committee. I solicited his latest insight into the NARA move to a more comprehensive digital strategy and so I will navigate out to College Park and then get myself back. No rain is expected which always makes traversing walking and riding to the meetings and walking around in the evening. We were there for the election this time last year and I still remember waking up at 3 am to hear Katie Couric say that as Pennsylvania went, so did the rest of the country. It was amazing to be in DC that next morning - I hadn't thought about what great effort it would take to buy a newspaper announcing the election results. And, since we were near the capitol area, there was the post-election buzz in the air.
The semester is on the downhill slide. Lots of grading awaiting me and managing some various personalities in both positive and less than positive ways.
I'm using Facebook more for daily updates and to share but I'm not quite ready to let go of my version of reflective practice. I should be putting big project updates on that blog but I have to get a bit more organized. And I'll be learning Wordpress as a result of some of my service activities.
Fall is definitely one of the best things about the academic life. And living in the Midwest. We had outstanding color this year despite what seemed to be the continual rain torrents.
I spent two days at the Eisenhower Library last week. There were newly released documents (or at least critical parts of documents) and I also discovered a new big topic to investigate after I finish the current one. I'm actually pretty excited about given that I can do such a much better job this time around. I had taken teachers to the Ike Library a few years ago but otherwise it had been over a decade since I had researched there. But I was looking at some of the same collections with new and much more experienced eyes and felt much more efficient. This is the part of my job I've missed - doing my work and not scrambling to get material together for teachers that they sometimes use and sometimes don't.
I'm headed to a national meeting and looking forward to engaging with colleagues from a variety of disciplines. I'll be in DC again in a month so there isn't the push to see and do everything in the evenings there normally is. I'm headed up early so that I can get out to Archives II to meet with the Assistant Archivist who was responsible for my appointment to the committee. I solicited his latest insight into the NARA move to a more comprehensive digital strategy and so I will navigate out to College Park and then get myself back. No rain is expected which always makes traversing walking and riding to the meetings and walking around in the evening. We were there for the election this time last year and I still remember waking up at 3 am to hear Katie Couric say that as Pennsylvania went, so did the rest of the country. It was amazing to be in DC that next morning - I hadn't thought about what great effort it would take to buy a newspaper announcing the election results. And, since we were near the capitol area, there was the post-election buzz in the air.
The semester is on the downhill slide. Lots of grading awaiting me and managing some various personalities in both positive and less than positive ways.
I'm using Facebook more for daily updates and to share but I'm not quite ready to let go of my version of reflective practice. I should be putting big project updates on that blog but I have to get a bit more organized. And I'll be learning Wordpress as a result of some of my service activities.
Fall is definitely one of the best things about the academic life. And living in the Midwest. We had outstanding color this year despite what seemed to be the continual rain torrents.
Labels: academic life, ACERA, DC, Eisenhower, Eisenhower Library, electronic records, ERA, Facebook, fall, Harry Truman, NARA, National Archives, Washington, WordPress
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Airborne Again
OK, this is the last trip for awhile (and normally this meeting is earlier in the month). I'm headed to DC for a National Archives electronic records meeting and there are always interesting discussions and insights from all - not only the DC internal agency bureaucracy but from the influential people representing a diversity of public and private sectors sitting around the table.
And, can I say, I love Midwest! They were able to find me an exit row seat and so I don't have to sit with the back of a seat in my lap like on the last two Southwest flights - it's unusual to get behind two inconsiderate people in a row (leaving the seat ALL the way back even when they are resting their head forward and not even touching the back of the chair). My seat doesn't recline but at least I'll have space in front of me.
We're staying near L'Enfant Plaza which has quite a few restaurants and interesting activities. Time to board.
And, can I say, I love Midwest! They were able to find me an exit row seat and so I don't have to sit with the back of a seat in my lap like on the last two Southwest flights - it's unusual to get behind two inconsiderate people in a row (leaving the seat ALL the way back even when they are resting their head forward and not even touching the back of the chair). My seat doesn't recline but at least I'll have space in front of me.
We're staying near L'Enfant Plaza which has quite a few restaurants and interesting activities. Time to board.
Labels: ACERA, electronic records, flight, NARA
Friday, February 08, 2008
Archives and Faust's This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
Reading Archives: "Faust argues that the American Civil War brought with it a new kind of national meaning: “The rhetoric of Civil War mortality statistics provided the language for a meditation on the deeper human meaning of the conflict and its unprecedented destructiveness, as well as for the exploration of the place of the individual in a world of mass – and increasingly mechanized – slaughter. It was about what counted in a world transformed” (p. 265). Although it is not Faust’s intent to write a meditation on the archival impulse, archivists and others interested in archives reading this book will come away with a deeper sense of why records are created and why they are preserved."
Labels: Civil War, death, Drew Gilpin Faust, electronic records, memory, National Archives, suffering
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Presidential Records and the National Archives
I was surfing around the Truman Library site this morning and in exploring the work of the Assistant Archivist for Presidential Libraries Sharon Fawcett, I discovered an interview with her that discusses the role of the National Archives in both preserving and providing access to the presidential papers. As can be expected, the short news blurbs don't usually tell the "rest of the story".
As a scholar, I first began doing research at presidential libraries while I was researching my dissertation on Harry Truman as a former president. Truman was the president most responsible for the preserving presidential records in the presidential library format as well as helping to enact legislation to provide former presidents with a pension. To my knowledge, Truman was the first president who went home to Independence, Missouri, after leaving the presidency and had no options but to live with his mother-in-law given that he had no "reserve" funds or existing income to support him in his retirement. Both are controversial, especially among some members of Congress, but this blog entry is going to focus on access to presidential records.
Even before electronic records became a part of the picture, presidential administrations produced voluminous amounts of records. And, from the beginning, the personal and the public has always been a blurred line because much of what the president does is something he discusses with friends and family members. And, especially with the advent of email and some recent administration officials' unwillingness to use it so that there is no record, some public leaders are quite afraid that their thoughts and ideas and communications can be too easily miscommunicated. So, it's a given that many presidential libraries will be surrounded by controversy.
Because Truman was the president in focus of this topic and his post-presidential papers are also at the Truman Library, I spent most of my research time in Independence. Luckily, I have relatives there who invite me to stay with them and thus significantly cut down my research costs - especially now that I am primarily scanning instead of making paper copies of documents. I still remember how welcoming Librarian Liz Safly is and was to any researcher. She always introduces everyone and also welcomes them to the break room to interact with other staff at the library. In part, this reflects Truman's own openness that he displayed in the decade he spent going to the library almost every day after his presidency. Only a fall in the bathtub in the early 1960s slowed him down prior to his death in the early 1970s. Liz was the Truman Library staff member who discovered the Truman journal written in a real estate book that had been sitting unnoticed in a desk for decades and provides a treasure trove of insight into Truman the man.
Phil Lagerquist was still working full time when I was first doing my research and he was the primary archivist who helped Truman move his papers to Independence and organize the library. Dennis Bilger was also a huge help and once commented that, at the time, I had done the most thorough job of looking through all of the relevant files.
Professor Jim Giglio of Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State University) had written an article for Presidential Studies Quarterly about the Truman post-presidency and suggested the topic when I met him at a regional history conference in Springfield at his university - The Mid-America Conference on History. Jim is also the author of the University Press of Kansas presidential series book on John F. Kennedy and has published a book about Stan Musial and is now working on a Missouri politician in his retirement.
As I traveled to other presidential libraries to find out if they had any Truman-related records because of any interaction or discussions they may have had relevant to any interactions they had with former presidents, including Truman. Partisanship, of course, played a pivotal role. And a significant number of records deal primarily with Secret Service protection of former presidents and their families.
Truman's records are full of references to various offers from the private sector that he says he refused to take because doing so with be undignified for a former president. Most of Truman's predecessors, however, did not agree with Truman and were more than willing to accept private funds for speaking and other official duties on behalf of particular companies and/or organizations.
Much of my early research was in the dark ages before the internet made not only finding aids but actual records more readily available online. So, even talking with archivists, I rarely knew much about what I might or might not find. One of the crucial factors was whether or not the records had been processed.
This points to one of the most important points that the press often doesn't have time to reference in its blurbs about access to presidential records- the sheer number of them just take lots of people and a great deal of time to preserve, organize, and make accessible. It may not be that a particular president or spouse or government official is trying to block records being available, it's quite often just not enough people and not enough time - especially as federal funding does not increase to match the increasing volume of records to process and the increasing demands for faster and more immediate access to the records.
Driving through the recent ice storm in Oklahoma reminded me of my trip to the Kennedy Library during the Blizzard of 96. I started the morning in Hartford, CT, having driven my Grand Am from my relatives in Youngstown, OH, to get to Boston. Snow had been predicted but the blizzard was not something I expected. After surviving a snow plow pouring icy snow over the overpass onto my windshield, I arrived at the door of the Kennedy Library to a mostly empty parking lot. I was greeted by a security guard who wanted to know what I wanted. My reply - "to research, of course". I didn't realize the whole city was virtually shut down - I naively thought that Boston could handle any amount of snow. So, I stayed nearby and did some reading (remember, no internet or email yet!) until they were opened the next day. I did find a great Italian deli within walking distance of the motel.
I was also caught in a blizzard when I researched at the Hoover Library in Iowa. Hoover had careers both before and after his presidency and Hoover and Truman had a good relationship and kept in contact with one another.
The Johnson Library held the most records primarily because of that president's being a Democrat and knowing that Truman's increasing "popularity index" could only help him. Truman's limited physical capacity at the time, however, limited actual interaction. The Republican Eisenhower administration was not as interested in a former Democratic president, especially given the animosity between the two men that most likely resulted from Truman's claim that he asked Eisenhower 'first' to run as a Democrat. Most of the relevant records at the Kennedy Library had not been processed.
Since that time, I've visited the Bush 41 Library in College Station and spent some time at the FDR Library when I was researching Eleanor Roosevelt for another project.
Until only recently, the Nixon Library was not part of the NARA Presidential Library system but I did visit Yorba Linda during a National Council for the Social Studies meeting in the late 1980s and also did some work at the Ford Library in Michigan.
At a recent Oral History Association meeting, I visited the Clinton Library and became aware of the vast amounts of emails the Archives staff have to effectively manage. Most striking was the fact that records are being processed according to the specific interests of lawsuits. This approach determined by current laws and policies means that archivists cannot systematically process records in the most efficient way and instead have to fish through a diverse group of records and handle records they can't process according to the dictates of a particular lawsuits, thus violating the "efficient desk" rule of limiting the number of times you touch a piece of paper before you are done with it. And, I still wish that the Clinton had chosen the Fayetteville instead of Little Rock as the home for their library given its closer proximity to my physical location. . . .
Obviously, Hillary Clinton's campaign for the presidency puts a new focus on the activities of post-presidents as well as the functions of their libraries.
As a scholar, I first began doing research at presidential libraries while I was researching my dissertation on Harry Truman as a former president. Truman was the president most responsible for the preserving presidential records in the presidential library format as well as helping to enact legislation to provide former presidents with a pension. To my knowledge, Truman was the first president who went home to Independence, Missouri, after leaving the presidency and had no options but to live with his mother-in-law given that he had no "reserve" funds or existing income to support him in his retirement. Both are controversial, especially among some members of Congress, but this blog entry is going to focus on access to presidential records.
Even before electronic records became a part of the picture, presidential administrations produced voluminous amounts of records. And, from the beginning, the personal and the public has always been a blurred line because much of what the president does is something he discusses with friends and family members. And, especially with the advent of email and some recent administration officials' unwillingness to use it so that there is no record, some public leaders are quite afraid that their thoughts and ideas and communications can be too easily miscommunicated. So, it's a given that many presidential libraries will be surrounded by controversy.
Because Truman was the president in focus of this topic and his post-presidential papers are also at the Truman Library, I spent most of my research time in Independence. Luckily, I have relatives there who invite me to stay with them and thus significantly cut down my research costs - especially now that I am primarily scanning instead of making paper copies of documents. I still remember how welcoming Librarian Liz Safly is and was to any researcher. She always introduces everyone and also welcomes them to the break room to interact with other staff at the library. In part, this reflects Truman's own openness that he displayed in the decade he spent going to the library almost every day after his presidency. Only a fall in the bathtub in the early 1960s slowed him down prior to his death in the early 1970s. Liz was the Truman Library staff member who discovered the Truman journal written in a real estate book that had been sitting unnoticed in a desk for decades and provides a treasure trove of insight into Truman the man.
Phil Lagerquist was still working full time when I was first doing my research and he was the primary archivist who helped Truman move his papers to Independence and organize the library. Dennis Bilger was also a huge help and once commented that, at the time, I had done the most thorough job of looking through all of the relevant files.
Professor Jim Giglio of Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State University) had written an article for Presidential Studies Quarterly about the Truman post-presidency and suggested the topic when I met him at a regional history conference in Springfield at his university - The Mid-America Conference on History. Jim is also the author of the University Press of Kansas presidential series book on John F. Kennedy and has published a book about Stan Musial and is now working on a Missouri politician in his retirement.
As I traveled to other presidential libraries to find out if they had any Truman-related records because of any interaction or discussions they may have had relevant to any interactions they had with former presidents, including Truman. Partisanship, of course, played a pivotal role. And a significant number of records deal primarily with Secret Service protection of former presidents and their families.
Truman's records are full of references to various offers from the private sector that he says he refused to take because doing so with be undignified for a former president. Most of Truman's predecessors, however, did not agree with Truman and were more than willing to accept private funds for speaking and other official duties on behalf of particular companies and/or organizations.
Much of my early research was in the dark ages before the internet made not only finding aids but actual records more readily available online. So, even talking with archivists, I rarely knew much about what I might or might not find. One of the crucial factors was whether or not the records had been processed.
This points to one of the most important points that the press often doesn't have time to reference in its blurbs about access to presidential records- the sheer number of them just take lots of people and a great deal of time to preserve, organize, and make accessible. It may not be that a particular president or spouse or government official is trying to block records being available, it's quite often just not enough people and not enough time - especially as federal funding does not increase to match the increasing volume of records to process and the increasing demands for faster and more immediate access to the records.
Driving through the recent ice storm in Oklahoma reminded me of my trip to the Kennedy Library during the Blizzard of 96. I started the morning in Hartford, CT, having driven my Grand Am from my relatives in Youngstown, OH, to get to Boston. Snow had been predicted but the blizzard was not something I expected. After surviving a snow plow pouring icy snow over the overpass onto my windshield, I arrived at the door of the Kennedy Library to a mostly empty parking lot. I was greeted by a security guard who wanted to know what I wanted. My reply - "to research, of course". I didn't realize the whole city was virtually shut down - I naively thought that Boston could handle any amount of snow. So, I stayed nearby and did some reading (remember, no internet or email yet!) until they were opened the next day. I did find a great Italian deli within walking distance of the motel.
I was also caught in a blizzard when I researched at the Hoover Library in Iowa. Hoover had careers both before and after his presidency and Hoover and Truman had a good relationship and kept in contact with one another.
The Johnson Library held the most records primarily because of that president's being a Democrat and knowing that Truman's increasing "popularity index" could only help him. Truman's limited physical capacity at the time, however, limited actual interaction. The Republican Eisenhower administration was not as interested in a former Democratic president, especially given the animosity between the two men that most likely resulted from Truman's claim that he asked Eisenhower 'first' to run as a Democrat. Most of the relevant records at the Kennedy Library had not been processed.
Since that time, I've visited the Bush 41 Library in College Station and spent some time at the FDR Library when I was researching Eleanor Roosevelt for another project.
Until only recently, the Nixon Library was not part of the NARA Presidential Library system but I did visit Yorba Linda during a National Council for the Social Studies meeting in the late 1980s and also did some work at the Ford Library in Michigan.
At a recent Oral History Association meeting, I visited the Clinton Library and became aware of the vast amounts of emails the Archives staff have to effectively manage. Most striking was the fact that records are being processed according to the specific interests of lawsuits. This approach determined by current laws and policies means that archivists cannot systematically process records in the most efficient way and instead have to fish through a diverse group of records and handle records they can't process according to the dictates of a particular lawsuits, thus violating the "efficient desk" rule of limiting the number of times you touch a piece of paper before you are done with it. And, I still wish that the Clinton had chosen the Fayetteville instead of Little Rock as the home for their library given its closer proximity to my physical location. . . .
Obviously, Hillary Clinton's campaign for the presidency puts a new focus on the activities of post-presidents as well as the functions of their libraries.
Labels: archivists, controversies, electronic records, former presidents, Harry Truman, NARA-KC, presidency, presidential libraries, processing, research, Truman
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Sunday evening at the university library
I've been meaning to spend more time at our university library and recent circumstances have allowed more time for doing work there instead of at home. Much to my surprise, I not only found 5 or 6 interesting new books, I found more like 25. I just immersed myself knowing that I couldn't focus on any one thing for very long anyway. Lots of 20th century history along with blogging, podcasting, and education books had arrived on our shelves. I also worked on an Eleanor Roosevelt encyclopedia entry. I hope to do some research in our special collections and in the records annex for the county historical society nearby (in my hometown across the state line).
Today I'm off to DC for a National Archives electronic records meeting. It will be good to be away and engaged and learning and interacting with fellow professionals as well as many who are leading the way into the digital future.
Today I'm off to DC for a National Archives electronic records meeting. It will be good to be away and engaged and learning and interacting with fellow professionals as well as many who are leading the way into the digital future.
Labels: ACERA, books, DC, electronic records, library, National Archives, research
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