My first couple of blogs focused on born-digital and scanned images created by Federal agencies and accessioned to the Still Picture unit, but I’m now shifting gears and highlighting some of our in-house digitization activities. The main series I’m going to talk about can trace its roots back to 1974 when we received the first … Continue reading Digitization Activities
In an effort to provide information on recently declassified motion pictures and sound recordings the Motion Picture, Sound and Video Branch will publish a quarterly list of newly declassified records. The United States Army (USA), United States Air Force (USAF), and the Department of Energy (DOE) have declassified nearly 200 films and sound recordings in the past few … Continue reading Declassified Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings – 1st Quarter
I'm writing this blog post to highlight and provide a link to a recent article posted online by National Archives volunteer and Still Picture researcher Harry B. Kidd. The article, "Navy Transport Stranded on Fire Island Beach", tells the story of the grounding of the USS Northern Pacific on the Fire Island sandbar and the … Continue reading Navy Transport Stranded on Fire Island Beach
This week’s guest post is from Richard Green, an archives technician with the Motion Picture, Video and Recorded Sound Division of NARA's Research Services, located in College Park, MD. He is currently studying history and psychology at the University of Maryland and is looking forward to attending graduate school in the fall of 2013. The … Continue reading Hollywood Roundtable
I’ve gotten to know President Harry Truman pretty well over the past year. I’m familiar with his opinions, mannerisms, and vocal cadence. In some ways, he reminds me of my grandfather. How did I become so well-acquainted with our 33rd president? I’ve never met him and I’m no presidential historian, but I do work in … Continue reading Getting to Know Harry Truman
This week’s guest post is from Richard Green, an archives technician in NARA’S motion picture department in College Park, MD. He is currently studying history and psychology at the University of Maryland and is looking forward to attending graduate school in the fall of 2013. On July 24, 1959, Vice President Richard Nixon traveled to … Continue reading If You Can’t Take the Heat…
A few weeks ago, thanks to the hard work of the Still Picture Processing Team and ARC staff, our largest series of digital photography was made available online through the National Archives Catalog. This series, "Combined Military Service Digital Photographic Files, compiled 1982-2007" (National Archives Identifier 6274097), contains 269,667 JPEG images of numerous military activities from the Defense … Continue reading Department of Defense Digital Photographic Files
This post was written by Randall Fortson, of the National Archives' Cartographic and Architectural Records Section. Have you ever wondered how the landscape has evolved over time? Forests are cut and/or planted, urban areas expanded, rivers are dammed to create reservoirs, farmland is taken out of production, lakes are drained, new road patterns are established, … Continue reading Snapshots in Time of the American Landscape
This post was written by Gregory Tavormina, of the National Archives' Still Pictures Unit. Gregory Tavormina is an archives technician within the Still Pictures Unit. Archives Researcher: “Do you have any photographs of ships?" NARA Employee: “Why yes, we do. You’ll find a card catalog of hull numbers right over there.” *points* Did you want pictures of ships, … Continue reading Help Me Help You – Or, “What do you want?”
When I first started working with the Still Picture Processing Team in College Park, MD , my first three projects dealt with gelatin dry plate glass negatives, albumen cartes-de-visite and Kodachrome film. Even though we will still be accessioning analog photography for years to come and dealing with the issues that come with that (most … Continue reading From Analog to Digital
