Posts Tagged ‘NARA’

More information concerning the closing of the National Archive (NARA) Northeast Region New York Branch is received from correspondent, Roger D. Joslyn, FASG.

Those of you that have had the pleasure of using the excellent facility and holdings of the New York City branch on Varick Street will want to know about the changes being made.

It appears as though the downsizing will affect the collections as they move the facility over to the Customs House in lower Manhattan.

Upstate New York Genealogy readers please note, it looks like we are losing another extremely valuable local research facility.  The  National Archives–Northeast Region in Manhattan has been our nearest location to access NARA record holdings.

Roger D. Joslyn, FASG, sent me this letter and requested that we share it here on UNYG.com/blog in the hopes of creating some public influence on the situation.  Roger makes a point to say that none of this information is truly “official” yet but it has been gleaned from various sources that he has.

Please read and take action.

“Dear Friends

Footnote and Ancestry are in the news recently regarding the digitizing that Footnote currently does, and the work that the parent company of Ancestry, The Generations Network (TGN), wants to do, at the National Archives (NARA).

NARA is asking for public comment regarding the non-exclusive contract that they intend to sign with TGN to embark on a digitization project at NARA of some parts of their collection.

Footnote and Ancestry are both very reputable companies and we all should be ever thankful to the Archivist who has such great forward thinking to bring this digitized content to the Internet. Online resources just keep getting better and better.

OK, Upstate New York Genealogy, tell me why I should subscribe to footnote?

Well that’s a pretty easy question to answer.

First off, you do not have to subscribe to take advantage of many of the features and some of the more important and popular data. For instance, you can just go to footnote and have a look see for free.

footnote.com has improved their on-line records viewer.

This site is extremely important to researchers that desire to see digitized original documents concerning their ancestors or historical research projects.

footnote has partnered with the U.S. National Archives (NARA,) to bring you millions of original documents and images.

Visit Footnote.com

Thank you.
Dick Hillenbrand – Upstate New York Genealogy – www.unyg.com

NOTE from DearMYRTLE: The following was just released by the NARA Public Affairs office. Please address all inquiries to Public.Affairs@nara.gov> Public.Affairs@nara.gov or contact Bryan McGraw, Director of Archival Programs at NPRC, at 314-801-9132.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 22, 2007
National Personnel Records Center Opens more than Six Million New Military Personnel Files
St. Louis, MO

* The National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) will open for the first time all of the individual Official Military Personnel Files (OMPFs) of Army, Army Air Corps, Army Air Forces, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard military personnel who served and were discharged, retired or died while in the service, prior to 1946.

The National Archives (NARA) is asking for input from anyone that is interested in their holdings to submit email comments regarding your own specific wishes for digitization.

There has been a great amount of material made public or by subscription with companies that have been electronically scanning the existing microfilm collection of NARA and offering the images on the web. The key word in that statement is “microfilm.” Here’s how it works. Many of NARAs holdings have been microfilmed previously and researchers have had access to those films through NARA, and the LDS Family History Library, and many other good reference libraries throughout the country. Some of the current commercial vendors like www.footnote.com and genealogybank, www.ancestry.com, www.google.com, and others, have been running those films through electronic gadgets that convert the film images to digital scans. This has opened up avenues into collections that are instantly available without having to order any film and it is an absolute marvel.