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Vol. 26:3 ISSN 0160-8460 September 1998
The Executive Director's Column
by Ann C. Newhall
The last issue of Annotation included the announcement of my appointment, but I thought it might be useful to begin my first column by providing additional information about my background. Like so many other professional women (and men), my career has been driven by family concerns, in my case the chronic illness of a member of my immediate family. As a consequence, over the years I have accepted - and left - a number of different posts in many different places.
I began my career at Yale University Library's Manuscripts and Archives Department, where I worked as a processing archivist and as a very junior member of an NHPRC-funded documentary editing project, the "Microfiche Edition of the Diary of Colonel Edward M. House." I served as Archivist of the Ford Foundation from 1980 until 1987, when I left the Foundation to take up archival consulting for several years. After a two-year period in which I put my career "on hold" in order to function as primary caregiver, I returned to work as a consultant. In 1993, I moved to Europe to head the Records and Archives Unit of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome, Italy; and in 1995 I became Head of the Archives, Records, and Communications Unit for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva, Switzerland.
Along the way, I have had the privilege of establishing archives and/or records management programs for some of the most influential organizations of our time, worked extensively with electronic records, been a "lone arranger" within a local historical society, and headed large multi-national staffs. My mainstays have been my education (masters degrees in American Studies from Yale University and in American History from Southern Connecticut State University); the training I received on-the-job, from Ruth Helmuth's program in Archives Administration at Case Western Reserve University, and from countless workshops and sessions at professional meetings; and the lessons I learned by observing my supervisors and colleagues all over the world. I have loved every minute of every post I've held, but I had come to believe that I would never find a position in which everything I've done would prove useful. Until now.
My first weeks in Washington were extremely hectic. Not only was I new to the NHPRC, I also was new to NARA, new to Washington, and newly returned to the United States of America, to the North American continent, and to the Western Hemisphere. The only constant was the planet Earth! Living abroad gives one a unique perspective on the United States of America. In my case, it served to deepen my appreciation for my native land, its institutions, and its history. Despite a few cultural glitches (U.S. currency is all the same color!), it is wonderful to be back, and especially wonderful to return as Executive Director of the NHPRC.
As Executive Director, my initial goals have been to get to know the staff; to "learn the ropes" at NHPRC; to prepare for my first Commission meeting in November; and to meet as many Commissioners, grantees, archivists, documentary editors, electronic records people, historians, and relevant educators as possible. To that end, I have attended the meetings of the Society of American Archivists, the American Association for State and Local History, and the Association for Documentary Editing. Future trips will include the annual meetings of the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to meet and talk with more of you. As I scramble up the learning curve, I have had a tremendous amount of assistance and support from the Commission's excellent staff; from the Commission's Chairman, Archivist of the United States John Carlin; from other members of the Commission; and from the National Archives and Records Administration staff, including Jerry George, my predecessor as Executive Director.
In all I do, I am conscious of the Commission's glorious achievements. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, it is my belief that never in the history of philanthropy has so much of this nation's documentary heritage been saved and made accessible with so little money (as someone remarked recently, our annual budget for grants barely constitutes "the tip for dinner" when considered in the context of the Federal budget!) with the assistance of so experienced and accomplished a staff.
NHPRC was officially established as the National Historical Publications Commission in 1934, by a separate section of the same Act of Congress that created the National Archives. In 1974, the "R" was added: National Historical Publications and Records Commission. NHPRC has done much to make possible the production of documentary editions of the papers, not only of the Founding Fathers, but also of a wide range of men (e.g., John C. Calhoun, General George C. Marshall, ), women (e.g., Isabella Beecher Hooker, Jessie Fremont, Emma Goldman), and groups (e.g., the Freedmen's Bureau, the Women's Trade Union League) who have influenced events and policy in these United States.
Most states now have active State Historical Records Advisory Boards (SHRABs). Thanks to projects funded throughout the nation by NHPRC grants, many SHRABs are active partners in planning and carrying out jointly funded programs to strengthen the nation's archival infrastructure and expand the range of records that are protected and accessible. The papers and photographs of thousands of men, women and groups who played significant roles in our history have been identified, saved, and made intellectually accessible. NHPRC fellowships for archivists and documentary editors have strengthened these professions. Each year, additional documentary editions, finding aids, books, guidelines, curriculum guides, etc., which have resulted from our projects, consultancies, and conferences continue to swell NHPRC's amazing harvest.
As the Commission heads into a new millennium, there is a definite sense of renewal here as we continue our activities with the states and the documentary editions while tackling our third - and perhaps most challenging - strategic goal: that of enabling the nation's archivists, records managers, and documentary editors to overcome the obstacles and take advantage of the opportunities posed by electronic technologies. This challenge is not a new, isolated area of interest replacing all that has gone before. Rather, it is the key to sustaining the success of the Commission's longtime, ongoing commitment to ensuring our understanding of the nation's past by promoting - nationwide - the identification, preservation, and dissemination of essential historical documentation.
What, for instance, is the best way to make documentary editions available electronically - and in a manner in which they still will be available five, ten, or a hundred years from now? How do we solve the problem posed by the fact that software and hardware are "upgraded" with such alarming frequency? An ever-increasing amount of the materials that form our time's documentary heritage - the correspondence, the diaries, the databases, the Web sites, the e-mail messages, the spreadsheets, the bulletin boards - is created digitally. Anyone who has ever attempted to migrate a document from one word-processing software to another will testify that, at best, re-formatting must be done in order to make the document appear the way it was intended. At worst, it simply cannot be done.
NHPRC is uniquely positioned to lead in the search for solutions. Our focus - first, foremost, and always - remains unswervingly on maintaining and making accessible the nation's historical documentation. And the combination of the knowledge and skill of Mark Conrad, the Commission's new Director for Technology Initiatives, with the experience and perspective of NHPRC's program staff is proving to be an exciting formula for innovation and investigation.
These are exciting times. There is much to do.
