You're Keeping That?

The National Archives

One of the best things about moving into our big, old house was the big, old barn.  Finally a place to put all our stuff, I thought. When we started packing everything up to move, it was clear that we had way too much stuff (I started referring to it as junk after the first five boxes).  

We packed up photo albums, cassettes, extra dishes, tons of old baby toys and clothes, yearbooks and, of course, stacks and stacks of books.  Did we really need to keep ALL this stuff?

What’s actually worth keeping?  Which photos, letters and books will my great grand kids want to see and what will they just end up tossing?  What special events should I record for posterity?  

These are the questions that archivists at The National Archives, and archives around the world, ask themselves everyday.  According to the National Archives, located at 700 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., only about 2% of the documents created by the government are actually worth keeping (big surprise), and even at that rate there are still 9 billion items stored away for safe keeping.

As far as I’m concerned libraries and archives are kissing cousins, both protecting text and photos for people to read and learn and discover.  They both support the desire to ‘find out’ about the unknown and reflect its importance.  And they are packed with really cool stuff.

The National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) is our nation’s record keeper and hangs on to the really important documents of our country’s founding, like the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights - they are all on display in hermetically sealed cases in the lobby - but they also have millions of documents that help individuals trace their family roots.  Veterans records, census reports, immigration documents, land records, passport applications and bankruptcy records can all help families discover their past.

Online you can visit a handful of digital exhibits that are packed with tidbits of history and wonderful pictures.  I tried out the ‘Docs Teach’ section for fun and found:

Ernest Hemingway’s high school notebook, with notes from his teacher

A photograph of two Titanic lifeboats with their survivors before being rescued

A report from the Wright brothers about their crash in 1908 and their intention to go back for another try.

A caravan of 1925 tourists in horse drawn wagons on a trip to the Badlands.

Each document holds a piece of American history, ready to be peeled back, investigated and understood.  Learning history through these artifacts is engaging and interesting, the stories feel relevant and alive, they are the opposite of the history book we had in high school.

It is fitting that Herbert Hoover was the one to lay the cornerstone of the National Archives since he was one of the first Americans to understand the value of the preservation of documents.  When he gave $50,000 to Stanford in 1919 to begin a war archive, Ray Lyman, Stanford’s President, wrote back to him asking for clarification.    Hoover understood the importance of saving documents in order to preserve our history but, more importantly, to help us understand the lessons of the past.  In 1926, seven years before the National Archives opened, the Hoover Institution had the largest library in the world devoted to document and artifacts from the war.  Two weeks before Hoover left the office of the President he lay the cornerstone of the National Archives Building and said:

"This temple of our history will appropriately be one of the most beautiful buildings in America, an expression of the American soul."

-- Herbert Hoover, February 20, 1933