Reclaim The Records takes on the US National Archives for Billions of Records

 

It is about time that this happened. The National Archives and Records Administration is supposed to be the nation's record keeper but only %-3% are so important for legal or historical reasons that they are kept and of those only a vanishingly small number of records are digitized and available to the public other than by actually visiting the locations of the main archives or one of the branch archives. When you visit the National Archives in Washington, D.C. you discover that very few of the records are available to the public without registering and going through a somewhat complicated procedure of identifying and accessing the actual records. Of course, during the Pandemic, all the research rooms and libraries are closed. See https://www.archives.gov/research/start/plan-your-visit.

When you physically visit the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and ask about record availability, you are directed to a few computers and told to look at Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org. This is due to the fact that the National Archives has a vanishingly small collection of online digital records. See "Digital Resources." See also, "Microfilm Publications and Original Records Digitized by Our Digitization Partners."

You can also see what is going on with digitization by looking at "Start Your Genealogy Research." When you click on a record category, such as Census records, you are directed to one of the Partner Resources. You cannot search National Archives records directly. 

Now to Reclaim the Records. You really need to read the entire description of what is going on and what needs to be done. 

Billions of Digital Images

Please take the time to read this article:

Billions of Digital Images and Associated Text Metadata Created Through the United States National Archives and Records Administration’s Digitization Partnership Program