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Vol. 31:1 ISSN 0160-8460 March 2003
The Executive Director's Column
Max Evans, Executive Director, NHPRC
I am honored to begin work as the eighth Executive Director of the NHPRC. As I look through the list of my predecessors, I see that I have large shoes to fill. Some of the profession's most distinguished and accomplished members have been where I am now-some more than once. They, and the men and women who served as interim Executive Directors, set lofty goals and left an extraordinary record of performance over more than a half century. I congratulate Ann Newhall, who preceded me, and Roger Bruns, current Deputy Executive Director and former Acting Executive Director, for outstanding service to the Commission and to the nation.
I look forward to working with a fine group of professional and support staff and with a very capable Commission. I look forward also to my association with the many individuals across the country who care for the preservation and publication of the nation's historical record. All of us together have a wonderful opportunity to make important contributions.
My career as an archivist, librarian, editor, publisher, and administrator has focused on access. We are stewards of the record of a democratic nation. We have an obligation to select, preserve, and otherwise manage this record for the benefit of the people. Our democratic society has produced an information culture. The idea of a free press promoted a society rich in information found in more and increasingly sophisticated media. We demand information from government and about its operations. And we expect, perhaps unreasonably, that our non-government archives are not only open to inspection, but easily so.
I believe that the NHPRC's purpose is to promote greater access to more of America's documentary heritage, for more people, in more places, in more ways, more quickly, and more easily. We do this by encouraging wise and careful selection and acquisition of records; arrangement and description of records; and publication of finding aids and primary sources, the latter in microfilm and edited letterpress and electronic editions. I am convinced that the national historical product, the sum of the work of scholars, teachers, and museum curators, increases and improves when both they and the people have access to the primary sources of which history is made.
Annotation is one way we inform our constituencies and sponsors of NHPRC's work to support these objectives. The December 2002 Annotation focused as a theme on New England, an appropriate symbol of Ann Newhall's association with the region. By coincidence, this issue deals with the West, my home region (the issue was planned long before I was selected). The Turnerian view of the West as vast land open to settlement by wave after wave of westward-moving frontiersmen is still held in the popular mind today, although generations of scholars have challenged this view. You will find within this issue descriptions of several NHPRC-sponsored projects. Each, in its own way, brings to light documentary evidence of the richness and complexity of Western history. Against the backdrop of the muted hues of the Western landscape are played out the stories of Native peoples who have always inhabited the land. Immigrants, including non-English-speaking peoples, approached the West from the South and Southwest, from the North, and from the Pacific coast. Each group brought its own rich culture. Their stories merge and overlap as they collide with others, as they work and play and struggle to maintain their own cultures while surviving in a harsh land.
NHPRC is proud of its record of bringing these records to scholars and citizens, so we can all better understand and appreciate our national historical experience.
