Speech: Archivist of the United States (and a Librarian) David Ferriero Speaks to Members of the Boston Library Consortium

The full text of Mr. Ferriero’s speech can be accessed here. It’s titled, “Protecting National Security in an Open Government Environment: the Role of the National Archives” and was delivered on April 11, 2011.

While discussing open government Ferriero included some stats and facts about NARA.

• At the present time approx. 485 gigabytes of material from the National Archives is available online.

• NARA has 28 Facebook pages

• Prologue, NARA’s flagship magazine, is available on iPad, iPhone, and Droid, as well as on Scribd and Zinio.

• “In its first full year of operation, OGIS [Office of Government Information Services], made substantial progress with FOIA requests. OGIS handled 391 cases, most of which did not rise to the level of dispute. Of the 83 cases that did involve disputes between requesters and 24 departments and agencies, OGIS resolved more than four out of five.”

• In 2o1o there was a backlog of 400 million pages at NARA (Material accessioned to the Archives but not fully processed for release)

• “Of the more than 400 million pages, 84 million have passed the quality review process, the crucial first stage of the review process. And of the 14.5 million pages that have been fully reviewed, 91 percent were declassified and put on open access to researchers.”

• NARA is seeking to reduce the 2,475 classification guides within the Federal Government.

• “We also recently finished screening 250,000 pages of United States Marine Corps records from the Korean War. Those Air and ground unit diaries included day to day accounts of the 1st Marine Division from the Battle of Chosin Reservoir during November and December .”

Read the Entire Speech

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Libraries, News, Open Access