United Nations: “Kofi Annan Declassified: Preserving His Legacy” (Access to Digitized Materials)

From the  Dag Hammarskjöld Library:

When former Secretary-General Kofi Annan completed his 10-year-term at the head of the Organization, he left behind 1,200 boxes of records – a literal flood of memos, letters, and handwritten notes.  Several of his close collaborators, UN Archives staff and a lecturer at City College came together at an event hosted by the Dag Hammarskjöld Library to talk about how those records were brought out into the open.

[Clip]

Stephen Haufek, Chief of the Archives Unit, described the painstaking process of selecting records for declassification and making them available online through the UN Archives website. The project took 2 years to complete and involved archivists and staff from the United Nations Executive Office of the Secretary-General. Richard Amdur, currently Deputy Director of Communications and Speechwriting, described it as “lonely work and Sisyphean labor that was also fascinating”.  As a result, 80% of Annan’s records are now available online for public consultation.

[Clip]

To find out more, explore the UN Archives Kofi Annan collection, the City College of New York’s selected papers of Kofi Annan, the UN Oral History Collection, and the Library’s Research Guide on the former Secretary-General.

Learn More, Read the Complete Blog Post

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Journal Articles, Libraries, News