Draft NARA Digitizing Plan Available For Public Comment

The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is seeking public comment on its draft Plan for Digitizing Archival Materials for Public Access, 2007-2016. This draft plan outlines the planned strategies to digitize and make more accessible the historic holdings from the National Archives of the United States.

A public meeting will be held in Washington, D.C. on October 4 at 10:30 to discuss the National Archives digitization plan. The link below will lead you to the plan.  For those of you not in the Washington area, the link provides instructions on how to register your comments on the plan.

Public input on this plan is important. Genealogists should read this plan carefully and ofer comments.

The  NARA Digitizing Plan draft is available at: http://www.archives.gov/comment/digitizing-plan.html.

UPDATE: The room for the meeting on the digitization plan is only listed on the NARA home page (www.archive.gov) and not on the page that the link takes you to.  The meeting is in the Jefferson Room at the National Archives.  If you enter on the Constitution Avenue side, the room is one flight up.

Comments

[Joy Rich]

So many commenters to this blog have wished that they would be allowed to suggest what should be digitized. Our National Archives wants us to do just that!

Joy

[JINNY COLLINS]

My mind is "boggled"! I found it very difficult and time-consuming to navigate through. Typical government, I guess. It's most disturbing to think that stuff in there is going to be destroyed after it's been declared NOT USEFUL - just because it was so hard to 'vote'! Tragic! Whew!

[Steven McLaughlin]

Nowhere on the list did I see Civil War Pensions. The NARA works for us it’s our tax dollars that keeps its doors open. The Civil War Pensions should be at the top of the list. All of us have Civil War veterans in our family history. Please take a moment to copy and past this request to and email "Scan ALL Civil War Pensions first" and send it to vision@nara.gov
Also please post this request on all the family history sites.
Thank You
Steven McLaughlin
Santa Ana, CA

[Dick Eastman]

UPDATE: The room for the meeting on the digitization plan is only listed on the NARA home page at http://www.archive.gov and not on the page that the link takes you to. The meeting is in the Jefferson Room at the National Archives. If you enter on the Constitution Avenue side, the room is one flight up.

[Susan Daily]

Steven, I believe (hope!) the Civil War pension files are going to be part of the partnership with a commercial interest, so that is why NARA does not list them as part of the works that they (NARA) plan to digitize. For now, Footnote.com is doing the index cards to the pensions. (See: http://www.footnote.com/nara.php )

Starting with page 20 it talks about partnerships with commercial interests. This would include firms like Footnote.com. I was pleased with the draft copy. It states that although the partnership company may charge for the information, NARA will be provided with a digital copy which they can offer free to the public online if they choose to do so. I am glad they aren't tying their hands up by not allowing this possibility. I would hope they show some good sense in allowing the commercial firm to have a chance to make money off the files first, before eventually making them public on an internet wide scale. I believe they should always be free to visitors of NARA facilities, however.

[Marie V Melchiori]

Claire Bettag, Gordon Erickson and I attended the NARA meeting this morning. The items, on pg 6 of the draft, mentioned for possible digitalization are just that, possibilities. The actual list has NOT been drawn up.

Once NARA receives feedback from the various groups they will compile a list of records, possibly later in the spring of 2008.

As genealogists if we want NARA to digitalize records important to us we HAVE to inform them of that fact. If NARA doesn't hear from us they will decide what they think we want.

So far only 60 responses have been received by NARA with comments on the Draft proposal.

Comments due: November 9, 2007.

Send comments to: Vision@nara.gov or by fax to 301-837-0319.

So far the digitalized records, by commercial companies, are only microfilmed NARA records. NARA states that only .02% of their holdings are microfilmed. On page 11, of the Draft, NARA states "The stratgic plan states that by 2012, 1% of our holdings will be available online."

So, if you're putting off a trip to NARA because they are going online, you might want to rethink it.

Take a few minutes and write your suggestions to NARA at
vison@nara.gov.

A little over a thousand letters/e-mails were received on the mail order price increases. They were the comments responsible for the lower prices. NARA does listen is we make our comments known to them.

[Joanne Kellar]

I just took a moment to e-mail NARA. It is true that they have not decided what records to digitize as I received an immediate reply thanking me for mentioning what records that I wanted to see digitized (Civil War & Immigration). I advise all to write to Vision@nara.gov, as it is very quick & easy, and tell them what records that you desire to be digitized and thank them for doing this. The more of us that write asking for the Civil War records, the more likely they will be on their list to digitize.
Joanne

[Mic Barnette]

I shall be emailing NARA to include War of 1812 records
MIC

[Gloria Ishida]

I just downloaded using http://www.archives.gov/comment/digitizing-plan.html and the result was that there was only page 1. First time this has ever happened downloading multiple pages.

[Gloria Ishida]

Oops but not quite. On the download, I tried again. As contrary to most which have all pages on right side as mini image, I found I have to manually put in each page number in the page space. Oh well.