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Individual people and NARA records

Ladies and gentlemen,

 

First, I apologize for the absence; it has been a bit frantic here. Next, I wanted to leave a small note regarding the choosing of topics.

 

I have gotten a few emails from regarding wanting to work on specific people, and that is fine. However, you must remember that NARA does not organize records topically. We are organized by record group, then office. That means that, for the most part, one cannot come in and say, "I want to see what you have on Dr. Mary Walker.” These records just do not work that way. I know that it is hard to wrap the head around and "logically" it should be simple to just ask for the records on a topic. However, that is not how the flow of business is conducted, thus not how the records are organized. In order to be able to use the records that involve a specific person, you have to figure out how that person specifically interacted with the federal government. Without that, there is no real way to pinpoint what records we may have, even if that person is famous, infamous or notorious. Even for someone like Abraham Lincoln, one cannot just ask for the "Abe Lincoln Collection." There is no such thing. You would need to ask for the record group you are concerned with first, then the office of that record group, and then down from there.

 

Does that make sense to everyone?

 

Have a great day.

 

Robyn

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Replies

  • Thanks for the info. This is all so foreign to me!

  • Thanks for this information, Robyn. It makes sense relative to the structure we've been discussing. So, if we want to know about Lincoln, we should first know the issue and which agency would have handled that issue, then work our way through it from there. Is that right?

    This makes the visual representation lesson even more helpful - we need to work from the outside in, not the other way around. I'll think about this as I continue with the lessons.

  • Yes, and I think this was one of my frustrations when I was using database searches before.  Unfortunately, knowing why you can't search by topic doesn't exactly make it easier to search!

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