National Archives Highlights Digitized Records By Location
By Pete Lewis
WASHINGTON, DC
Did you know that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) isn’t just a building in Washington, DC? It’s actually a collection of more than 40 facilities nationwide, including field archives, federal records centers, and presidential libraries.
To better highlight the archival holdings nationwide, the National Archives established a new web page: Highlights From Our Holdings at the National Archives. Seven locations are currently linked from the page: Atlanta, Boston, Fort Worth, Philadelphia, Riverside, San Francisco, and Seattle. Each of those pages features 10–14 records from their holdings, and there are 75 featured records thus far.
“In addition to what is already highlighted on the page, we plan to create pages for the National Archives at Chicago, the National Archives at Denver, the National Archives at Kansas City, the National Archives at New York City, and the National Archives at St. Louis, as well as pages highlighting our holdings in College Park, MD, and Washington, DC,” said Erin Townsend, Communications Coordinator, Research Services.
The new web pages contain an array of documents that will be interesting to a wide audience.
“In some cases, we have featured documents relating to well-known individuals, such as the naturalization records of Maria Von Trapp and Marlene Dietrich, the bankruptcy petition for Edgar Allen Poe, and the World War I draft registration card of Herman ‘Babe’ Ruth,” said Lori Cox-Paul, Director, Field Records Division. “In other cases, we have chosen documents relating to individuals whose stories have been told in movies, such as the memo disbanding the racially segregated work unit Dorothy Vaughan worked in. Her story was told in the film Hidden Figures. We have also included the Slave Manifest listing Solomon Northup, whose story was told in Twelve Years a Slave.”
The web pages will also serve to highlight well-known events, such as the Mount Saint Helens eruption in 1980, as well as lesser-known, but equally important, stories from American history. Site users can view a photograph of women who served as Yeomanettes in 1918, the first women to enlist in the U.S. Navy, and a photograph of sailors who served on the USS Mason (DE-529), the first U.S. Navy ship with a predominantly Black crew.
“We’ve also highlighted the different formats of records we hold, including an architectural drawing for the initial design of Seattle’s iconic Space Needle and the elevation plan of Boston’s Custom House Tower,” Cox-Paul said. “And for fun, we included an engineering drawing created by the Forest Service Region 8 office showing detailed designs for cocktails.”
Highlights from Our Holdings at the National Archives is live now.