$481 Million Budget Request for National Archives and Records Administration Critical for Preservation, Protection and Access to the Records of the U.S. Government

Washington, DC, March 11, 2024 - The White House today released the President’s Budget for Fiscal Year 2025, which includes a request for $481.1 million in discretionary budget authority for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).  Those funds are carefully targeted to help the National Archives safeguard and provide access to the more than 13.5 billion physical pages of records it holds in trust for the nation. It will also invest in the development of the necessary technology and expertise to manage the rapidly growing born-digital records of the United States Government. 

“As the nation’s record keeper, the National Archives is part of the bedrock upon which accountable governance, informed decision-making, and the preservation of our nation’s history is built. To succeed in our mission, we must evolve to meet the demands of the digital age,” said Archivist of the United States Dr. Colleen Shogan. “I’m grateful that the President’s Budget supports critical investments that will help us accelerate digitization, transform digital access, and ensure that the National Archives can continue to protect, preserve, and share the nation’s history in the 21st century.”  

The Budget makes important investments in the American people that will promote greater prosperity for decades to come. At the National Archives and Records Administration, the Budget will: 

• Provide Unprecedented Access to History. Funding for a multiyear initiative will allow for systematic digitization of collections describing the history, rights, and struggles of communities across the United States. The budget supports technology investments to expand digitization and online digital access and investments in subject matter experts to perform the work of scanning and describing records for online access. The request also includes funding to increase the speed and efficiency of responding to requests for protected Presidential records and to support declassification review of classified records. 

• Support U.S. Government Transition to Fully Electronic Recordkeeping. With the requirement that all federal records be created, retained, and managed in electronic formats by June 2024, the FY25 budget requests $2.9 million in new funding for management of NARA’s growing digital holdings. This funding supports 35 new staff focused on improving access to permanent electronic records.

• Enhance Cybersecurity. The President’s Budget request includes $7.8 million to improve NARA cybersecurity. Funds requested would support the implementation of Zero Trust Architecture principles and multifactor authentication for NARA applications and mobile devices to ensure the security of our systems and the records we protect.  

• Provide Excellent Customer Service to the Nation. The Budget requests $5.2 million to improve NARA’s digital customer experience, with critical enhancements for archives.gov and the National Archives Catalog.

For more information on the President’s FY 2025 Budget, please visit: https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/. 

For press information, contact the National Archives Public and Media Communications staff at public.affairs@nara.gov. 

Here is a list of all of this week's articles, all of them available here at https://eogn.com: 

A searchable, online archive called Moaʻe Molokaʻi has launched with more than 20,000 scanned records and oral histories.

The digital repository is the first of its kind in Hawaiʻi that’s island-specific.

It contains digitized versions of old yearbooks, reports, photos, maps, historic newspapers and more. Users can search the names of family members, keywords or locations. 

Search results offer highlighted pages within specific documents.

It was all created and compiled by Moloka’i nonprofit Ka Ipu Makani Cultural Heritage Center. 

Executive Director Pulama Lima said its goal is to preserve the island’s history and provide a centralized, accessible format to bridge the gap between past, present and future.

The project is ongoing, and staff will continue adding materials to the online repository. 

To learn more and explore the archive, click here.

The following is an excerpt from an article published by the University of Galway:

Letter from Patrick Callaghan, Fort Warren, Boston, Massachusetts, to his sister, Bridget Callaghan, Fallow, Kilmacthomas, Waterford (county), 9 March 1882. (reproduction). Archives reference ID: p155/1/1/1. Kerby A. Miller Collection. University of Galway. Credit: Imirce/University of Galway/Kerby A. Miller 

University of Galway has launched Imirce, a digital repository of thousands of Irish emigrant letters and memoirs dating from the late 1600s through to the mid-20th century. 

Featuring correspondence and other documents sent from North America, the collection offers an unparalleled insight into the personal reflections and lives of people as they wrote home to family and friends in Ireland.   

The Imirce project has enabled the creation of an online, publicly accessible archive of the Kerby A. Miller Collection - a unique record of personal correspondence from the Irish diaspora in the US. 

The archive includes approximately 7,000 letters, running to more than 150,000 documents, along with other important historical papers. It was collected over five decades of research by Kerby A. Miller, Emeritus Professor of History at University of Missouri and Honorary Professor of History at University of Galway, who donated the material to the University of Galway Library. 

The letters and documents provide valuable insights into universal themes and individual perspectives influenced by class, religion, gender and political circumstances. The collection is especially rich in the post-famine period from 1850-1950.

You can read the full article at: https://tinyurl.com/mr394mkt.

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. 

I have more than 3,000 photos and videos stored in my cell phone. That includes pictures of my grandchildren, photos from genealogy conferences, images of old documents found in various archives, recipes that I "photo-copied" from magazines, bills, receipts, and even a few billboards I enjoyed and decided to save.

Of course, I want to copy all of these items to one or more cloud-based services as well as to my own computers for long-term storage and preservation. Over the past year or two, I have experimented with programs that copy photos from a cell phone to Amazon Cloud Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox, Copy.com\, and several other services. 

All of them worked although some worked better than others. However, I always felt in the throes of chaos with this hodge-podge of different products to copy the photos (and sometimes other files) to a variety of online services. Some programs transferred everything while one or two other products would only transfer pictures but not videos. Most of the programs either worked with only one online file storage service or would only copy files to my desktop computer. 

I recently found one inexpensive program that copies photos to almost all of the popular cloud-based storage services, including iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows PC, Mac, Linux, NAS, cloud services & more. Even better, it offers native apps for iOS (iPhone, iPad), Android, Windows PC and Macintosh as well as Linux.

It will copy photos and videos to any Windows or Macintosh desktop or laptop computer and will even copy the same images and videos to other cell phones and tablet computers. In short, it will store photos and videos in the cloud or in local computer(s) or in other cell phones and tablet computers or in all of the above. Your choice. It seems to be an excellent method of keeping all your photos and videos wherever you want to keep them.

The remainder of this article is reserved for Plus Edition subscribers only. If you have a Plus Edition subscription, you may read the full article at: https://eogn.com/(*)-Plus-Edition-News-Articles/13326950.

I thought I had seen all sorts of "real estate" advertisements, but a new one caught my eye this week. This online real estate service advertises very small plots of land for sale. Very small.

Many people own cemetery plots that are no longer needed or wanted. If you contact the cemetery office, you probably receive a reply that they do not repurchase cemetery plots. Why should they? After all, the cemetery's owners probably have more plots of their own still for sale. 

Graves4sale.com claims to be the only site of its kind on the Internet. It lists graves, mausoleum crypts, or cremation niches that you want to sell. It even contains listings for pet cemeteries. The company is an advertising service, not a broker or agent. They charge fees only for advertisements, never when a sale is made.

The Graves4sale.com web site advertises that it lists: cremation gardens, cremation niches, mausoleum crypts, and even pet cemeteries for sale.

For a one-time cost of $29.00, your ad will remain on the site for 2 years or until a sale is made. A photograph may optionally be included with the advertisement.

You can find Graves4Sale.com at http://www.graves4sale.com 

A bill that passed both chambers on Friday will create a new centralized database for West Virginia's cold cases. 

The sponsor of Senate Bill 539,  Sen. Tom Takubo, R-Kanawha, said it goes beyond just the organization of cold cases. It is also for people who are missing and victims who have still not been identified. The senator is hoping this database, coupled with new forensic science will be a starting point for closure.

“It’s just like pieces of a puzzle when they’re scattered all over the place you can’t see the big picture," Takubo said. 

Under this bill, law enforcement agencies across the state will be able to send information to the Fusion Center where it will then be compiled into one database where agencies will be able to collaborate and even see possible patterns. 

The database would include unsolved violent crimes, sex crimes, missing persons and unidentified human remains. Takubo said it also sets the stage for groundbreaking partnerships between the Fusion Center, Marshall University and West Virginia State Police. 

“Marshall’s doing some pretty amazing stuff with forensics and about to get into more forensic genealogy working in collaboration with our State Police and Fusion Center," Takubo said. "We have currently 38 west Virginians that are unidentified that we don’t know who they are. It’s important to start collecting that data, so we can better track that. What’s more exciting is the technology that’s coming. I think we’re going to finally be able to get some indication and get some closure to those families.”

The database will be shared among law enforcement and is designed to contain every detail investigators have gathered so far. Sen. Vince Deeds, R-Greenbrier, who used to be a state trooper, said in committee that this database is much needed.

You can read more in an article by Anna Saunders published in the MSN.COM web site at: https://tinyurl.com/5n6t4n6f.

The following is a press release issued by Ancestry.com:

Ancestry®, the global leader in family history, today announced it has digitized more than 1.6 million historical records from the Guinness Storehouse Archives. For the first time, people can use Ancestry to discover if Ireland's most iconic brewery is part of their family legacy—just in time for St. Patrick's Day.

Starting today through March 22, anyone can go to ancestry.com/guinness to see if they can discover their ancestors in millions of Guinness and Irish heritage records - for free. By simply entering a grandparent's name and where they might have lived, people will be given rich, visual stories about who their ancestors were, where and how they lived, the challenges they overcame, and ultimately how their story led to today.

The digitized records capture details of Guinness' Dublin, Ireland St James Gate Brewery employees like home address, occupations, names and ages of members of the household, how much money they made at the time, leaves of absence and more. The collection dates from 1799-1939, during a time when Guinness was the largest single private employer in Ireland. In fact, these may be some of the only written records to exist from this period relating to former Guinness employees, and some of the only available records for women during this period.

The newly digitized records make it possible for people with Irish roots to brew up discoveries such as:

• Does Guinness run in your family? It was common for multiple generations to work at the brewery.
• What were your ancestors' career paths like? Learn how their job titles and salary shifted with the years.
• Which of Dublin's cobblestone streets their ancestors lived on - down to the exact address - and with whom.
• What pubs purchased Guinness throughout Ireland and the UK spanning from the early 1860s to the 1970s.

"We're thrilled to give people a chance to connect with a new part of their heritage and fill any gaps in their family trees," shares Todd Goddfrey, Vice President of Global Content at Ancestry. "With the rich history of Guinness, digitizing these records allows people to explore an entirely new side of their culture–no matter how much they currently know about their background. Our partnership with Guinness has been a decade-long endeavor and we are excited to bring it to Ancestry this St. Patrick's Day."

"Guinness is at the heart of Irish history, making our partnership with Ancestry a truly special moment in time," added Eibhlin Colgan, archive manager, Guinness Storehouse. "We're a brand with a history that dates back over 260 years and has seen countless generations of families employed at the St. James's Gate brewery in Dublin since Arthur Guinness Sr. first signed his 9,000-year lease back in 1759. And today, we're excited to be connecting families across the world with their ancestors who have helped keep the magic of Guinness alive for centuries."

St. Patrick's Day is a great time to explore your Irish history. To celebrate, Ancestry is inviting people to:

• Explore the Guinness Archive collection for free at ancestry.com/guinness.
• Save up to $50* on AncestryDNA® to explore origins in over 200+ Irish communities
• Try Ancestry free for 14 days
• Gift an Ancestry subscription and DNA kit, on sale for $149*, to search millions of additional Irish records

It's time to pour a pint to your past!

About Ancestry®
Ancestry®, the global leader in family history, empowers journeys of personal discovery to enrich lives. With our unparalleled collection of more than 60 billion records, over 3 million subscribers and over 25 million people in our growing DNA network, customers can discover their family story and gain a new level of understanding about their lives. Over the past 40 years, we've built trusted relationships with millions of people who have chosen us as the platform for discovering, preserving and sharing the most important information about themselves and their families.

About The Guinness Storehouse
The Guinness Storehouse, World's Leading Tourist Attraction 2023, gives Guinness lovers the chance to experience the history, heart, and soul of Ireland's most iconic beer. A visit to the Home of Guinness includes a behind-the-scenes look at the craft of brewing a perfect pint of the Black Stuff, an exhibition and cinema room dedicated to vintage Guinness advertising, and the chance to enjoy a pint in the Gravity Bar while enjoying Dublin's best view.

The Guinness Storehouse tells the story of one of Ireland's most loved brands. Visitors from Ireland and abroad discover what goes into making each pint, learn about the incredible brand history stretching over 264 years, its iconic advertising, as well as a tasting like no other. The experience unfolds across seven floors, including the highlight for many visitors - the famous Gravity Bar - where visitors can enjoy unparalleled panoramic 360⁰ views of Dublin city. On top of the standard experience, guests can also enjoy an Academy experience, the STOUTie experience and the Connoisseur experience.

Housed at St. James's Gate in the heart of Dublin's Liberties, the seven floors of the Guinness Storehouse were built through a €42 million redevelopment of a 113-year-old former Guinness fermentation plant. Since 2000, the Guinness Storehouse has continually been enhanced, developing its experience to exceed consumers' expectations. The newly revamped Gravity Bar is the latest example of this. The panoramic bar, located on the seventh floor, has more than doubled in size, and is now structured as a figure of eight, giving stunning views across the Dublin cityscape.

The Guinness Storehouse recently launched the Guinness Brewery Experience, where visitors will embark on an unforgettable journey through the working brewery that has stood at St. James's Gate for the past three centuries. A once-in-a-lifetime experience, guests are invited into the tunnels underground and to marvel at modern technology at Brewhouse 4.

About Guinness
The Guinness brand was established in 1759, when Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease on St. James's Gate Brewery in Dublin. Brewed using four main ingredients, water, barley (malted & roasted), hops and yeast, Guinness is the world's most popular stout. The iconic beer is brewed in 49 countries worldwide and sold in over 150 with almost 9 million glasses of Guinness enjoyed every day around the world. The most GUINNESS is sold in Great Britain, Ireland, USA, Nigeria and Cameroon. More information can be found at www.guinness.com.

*Offers end 17 Mar 2024. Terms apply.

The following announcement was written by the employees of Digital NC:

The 1966-1970 issues of the Watauga Democrat (Boone, N.C.) are now available online at Digital NC, thanks to our partner, the Watauga County Public Library. 

Browse through this weekly paper to see the happenings of Boone over half a century ago! Weekly marriage announcements, birth announcements, and obituaries are sure to make this a rich resource for any genealogist, especially due to text-searchable pages.

Plus, who doesn’t want to fantasize about grocery prices being this cheap again:

Founded in 1888, the Watauga Democrat still reports on local news today. Check out their website here! To explore other issues of the Watauga Democrat on Digital NC, click here. And to search through other North Carolina newspapers in our collection, click here.

The following announcement was written by the employees at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration:

First Ladies have always been prominent figures in the political and social life of the United States. In celebration of Women’s History Month, Archivist of the United States Dr. Colleen Shogan led a panel discussion at the National Archives Museum in Washington, DC, March 4, focusing on the impact and legacy of America’s First Ladies.

Enlarge

(L-R) Anita McBride, Diana Carlin, Nancy Kegan Smith, and Archivist of the United States Dr. Colleen Shogan during a discussion of McBride, Carlin, and Smith’s new book, Remember the First Ladies: The Legacies of America's History-Making Women, in the Archivist’s Reception Room at the National Archives in Washington, DC, on March 4, 2024. National Archives photo by Susana Raab.

Participants included Diana Carlin, a professor emerita of communication at Saint Louis University; Anita McBride, director of the First Ladies Initiative at American University, School of Public Affairs; and Nancy Kegan Smith, former director of the Presidential Materials Division of the National Archives. The three co-authored the new book Remember the First Ladies: The Legacies of America's History-Making Women, which explores First Ladies’ unique position to influence American society, policy, diplomacy, and life in the White House and illuminates how many of them broke barriers to make a mark on our country and, at times, the world.

The panel discussed the role of the First Lady of the United States. Though it is an internationally recognized position, it has never been officially defined.

“That’s what makes it so powerful. The minute that the President is sworn in at that inauguration platform, an automatic powerful platform is handed also to his spouse. The question is, how do they use it? How do they deploy their influence?,” McBride said. “And you really are freed up by not having a written position description. Each person gets to rewrite how they want to use this role. If we talk about inclusive history in our country, how could we not include the stories of these women, because it is very profound how they have made contributions over the [almost 248] years of our country’s existence.”

The panelists then recalled the important work that many of the First Ladies passionately pursued, such as Eleanor Roosevelt’s work to further New Deal proposals, civil rights, and the rights of women; Betty Ford’s advocacy for the Equal Rights Amendment and the legalization of abortion; Laura Bush support for literacy and education; and Michelle Obama’s championing of childhood physical fitness and nutrition and support for military families.

“You hear more about the First Ladies after a Presidency, oftentimes, than you do the Presidents themselves,” Carlin said. “And a lot of that is because the issues they took up were not political, and they are things that have social impact that can continue.”

The discussion was followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience.

View the event on the National Archives YouTube channel.

Browse the National Archives Catalog for records related to our First Ladies.

Women’s History programming is made possible in part by the National Archives Foundation through the generous support of Denise Gwyn Ferguson.