The E-Sylum:  Volume 10, Number 11, March 18, 2007, Article 13

ON THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES' NEW ACCESS POLICIES

Dick Johnson forwarded an extensive article by Carren Kaston titled 
provocatively, "The National Archives - A Dying Institution?" The 
institution drastically reduced the times for public access in October 
2006, and the research community has been up in arms ever since. 
Kaston writes:

"For many years, the Archives was open a full day on Saturday, and in 
The evenings on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday every week. That level of 
access - amounting to 60 hours a week - was on a par with the access 
offered by the Library of Congress, Washington's other major research 
facility, which has been and continues to be open three evenings a week 
and on Saturdays. But the Archives has now eliminated nearly all 
evening and Saturday hours.

"Public access at NARA is also threatened by a recent two thirds 
Reduction in the number of technicians who "pull" materials, such as 
Government correspondence and documents, in the Textual Records 
Research Room. Wait times of several hours can occur, when the standard 
used to be one hour, and the number of incorrect pulls has proliferated."

For perspective on the problem, I asked numismatic researcher Roger 
Burdette. He writes: "The elimination of Saturday and evening hours, 
except for one weekend a month, is a hardship on those who have limited 
research time and resources. 

"Before, I could schedule a Friday off from work, request the documents 
at the 9:30 'pull' time and be able to spend the balance of the day 
plus Saturday examining materials. The new hours eliminate most evening 
and Saturday work time, thus requiring either a costly weekday visit or 
an attempt to schedule around the single available weekend. Also 
eliminated was one document 'pull' time during the day. This makes it 
more time consuming to get additional documents from a second batch if 
the first proved fruitless.

"Research is slow work, and many professional researchers put in long 
hours in order to collect information for their clients. Elimination 
of most evening and Saturday hours is likely having a severe impact 
on their productivity."

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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