Society for American Archivists' article "Expanding Access at the National Archives"

This May marked my one-year anniversary of becoming Archivist of the United States. In my first 12 months in office, I  traveled more than 32,000 miles and visited nearly three-quarters of NARA’s facilities, including 10 of our Presidential Libraries. During this whirlwind of a year, I’ve met with staff and delved into the breadth and depth of what we do across the nation. Through these visits and discussions with National Archives staff and external stakeholders, I have also identified several critical priorities we must address. 

My highest priority for the agency is access. The National Archives has more than 13.5 billion analog records in our holdings, making us the largest publicly accessible government archive in the world. However, we have digitized only about two percent of our historic holdings. We’re currently working on innovative and creative ways to make more records discoverable at a much faster pace. Part of this effort is the opening of a new state-of-the-art digitization center at the National Archives at College Park this April.

We celebrated a big victory for access in January when we eliminated the pandemic-related backlog of military personnel records requests at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. During my confirmation hearing, I promised that eliminating the backlog would be my highest priority, and I’m proud that we met that goal. I don’t think there is a better example of NARA’s mission than providing veterans and their families with the records they need for health care, education, home loans, and so many other benefits they have earned for their service to the nation.  

I am prioritizing the development of a sustainable, scalable long-term plan for digital transformation. I’ve created a cross-agency working-group focused on making improvements to NARA’s IT infrastructure, the usability and functionality of the online Catalog, and our next-generation search application. We’re working to enhance our record description and metadata capture to improve  functionality, and we will increase staff capacity to manage and share electronic records. We are also actively exploring artificial intelligence tools to streamline and accelerate our operations, including for our FOIA review, record processing, and search.  

Another priority is making the National Archives as visitor-friendly as possible. I’ve focused considerable attention on visitor services, customer satisfaction, researcher experience, and outreach and engagement. Our goal is to provide visitors—whether in-person or online—with the best possible experience and to help connect them with the nation’s records.

To that end, we are reimagining our public exhibit spaces and developing an updated visitor experience at the National Archives Building in Washington, DC, with increased visitor services staff, new museum galleries, and a repeal of a long-standing prohibition on photography. In June 2023, less than one month into my tenure, I announced that the Emancipation Proclamation would be added to the National Archives Rotunda. Along with the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights, this document will help tell a more comprehensive story of the American experience.  

Outside of Washington, DC, we reopened the permanent exhibit gallery at the National Archives at Kansas City, provided additional resources for the Presidential Library system, and increased community engagement across the agency. 

I’ve also initiated a comprehensive review of the National Archives education and public programming. We have the obligation to help students learn about American history and civics, and we want the National Archives to be the first stop for all teachers looking for useful and engaging materials for their classrooms.

I believe that increasing access, growing visitor services, and becoming a national leader in civics and history education are critical. Achieving these goals is especially important now as we make preparations for America250, the 250th anniversary of the United States in 2026. As the home of the Declaration of Independence, we will be taking a leading role in the national celebration, and these goals will better position the National Archives to connect with all Americans as we celebrate this historic milestone.