Archives Found

A late call to the Atonement Phone last night brought an update to the saga of Stephen Colbert’s painting: while April 1st was the last day the portrait was hanging in the National Portrait Gallery, apparently Brent Glass of the Smithsonian decided to take it for the next two weeks. Stephen’s portrait will be hanging in the Smithsonian as part of the Treasures of American History exhibit until April 13th. Because of the current renovation project at the American History museum, the exhibit is being held at the Air & Space Museum.

This morning’s brief NYT article about the death of one of the last known survivors of the Titanic made me pause for a moment. Not because I’m a Titanic buff (I’m not, though I do find the story to be fascinating), but because of the mention that the deceased was one of the last two survivors of that fateful journey, a representative of the past. As time marches onward, memories fade and we begin to lose more and more “eyewitnesses” to history. Within my lifetime, the last Holocaust survivor, the last soldier present on D-Day, and others will slowly go “into that good night.” I’m not ready for that to happen yet. As an archivist charged with preserving history, I feel that I am always looking for ways to stave off a time when firsthand accounts are no longer available in the flesh. Of course oral histories look to fill that gap, but are there other things that we can do as keepers of the record to preserve the immediacy of speaking with someone who was there at Normandy? How can we, without overinterpreting or overemphasizing, better bring an accurate sense of the past to the present? What are the best ways to capture these things now, before the opportunity is lost?

NARA announced yesterday that they are opening approximately six million veterans records at NPRC. This is exciting news for veterans, genealogists, and historians. The original records can be viewed at the NPRC reading room in St. Louis. Honestly, understanding which military records reside in various NARA (and other) facilities is somewhat confusing, but there’s a handy grid here that helps to clarify which records are available at NPRC. This batch of OMPFs (Official Military Personnel Files) corresponds with individuals who served in the Army, Army Air Corps, Army Air Forces, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard and left the service (discharged, retired, died) prior to 1946. However, additional records are also available at NPRC. Note: the DD 214s (OMPFs) will not be available online, and will require authorization from veterans or kin for third-party release. More information available through NARA.

I always love to find out what other people are reading, and I found it especially interesting to see how many Nobel Prize winners attribute their early influences to libraries. I feel like the ALA or a literacy group should try to team up with them for some sort of publicity campaign.

If you have a spare $20-30 million dollars in your pocket this fall, the Ross Perot Foundation is selling its copy of the Magna Carta.

It is the document that laid the foundation for fundamental principles of English law. Angry colonists complained long before the Boston Tea Party that King George III had violated it. The men who drafted the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights borrowed from it.

It is Magna Carta, agreed to by King John of England in 1215 and revised and reaffirmed through the 13th century. The tail dangling off the page is a royal seal.

And it is about to go on sale.

This is the only copy of the Magna Carta currently in the United States, and until last week it was on display in Washington DC at the National Archives, right next to the Declaration of Independence. I hope that the buyer realizes that this document was in excellent hands at NARA, and that they will hopefully lend it to NARA or a similar institution again so that it can be cared for properly and made visible to the public.