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College Park, MD. . . Archivist of the United States John W. Carlin
announced today that the first group of digitized images of some of the
National Archives and Records Administration's (NARA's) most significant
documents are now available to the public through the Internet. As part of
NARA's Electronic Access Project, these 5,300 documents are the first of
approximately 120,000 items that will be digitized and available
electronically over the next year. In making the announcement, the
Archivist said, "The Electronic Access Project will enable anyone,
anywhere, with a computer connected to the Internet to search descriptions
of NARA's nationwide holdings and view digital copies of its most popular
documents." The project is funded by the U.S. Congress with the support of
Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska who said, "This is an exciting technological
advancement that will bring the valuable resources of the National Archives
into homes and schools across the nation."
The digitized materials including photographs, drawings, maps, charts and
textual documents, can be accessed on the World Wide Web through the NARA
ARCHIVAL INFORMATION LOCATOR (NAIL) at
http://www.nara.gov/nara/nail.html
Additional documents will be added to NAIL monthly through April 1999.
Highlights of the newly digitized materials include:
* Watercolor sketches by John J. Young from a 1859 exploration of the Utah
territory * Civil War maps, plans, engineering drawings, diagrams,
blueprints and sketches of forts * Civil War photographs by Mathew Brady,
Alexander Gardner and George N. Barnard * Photographs of civil works
projects in northwestern states, 1900-52; * Groundbreaking photographs by
Lewis Hine documenting child labor abuses for the National Child Labor
Committee, 1908-12; * Photographs and documents from a 1921 survey of
Blackfeet Indians; * Original sketches drawn by artist Charles Alston to
highlight the participation of African Americans during World War II; *
Photographs of the Kennedy White House; * Environmental Protection Agency
photographs of environmental issues of the 1970's; * United States
Information Agency reports on U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam and on
the impact of race relations in the U.S. on American foreign policy.
The documents are from NARA units across the country: the Cartographic and
Architectural Branch, Textual Reference Branch, and Still Picture Branch in
College Park, MD; the Rocky Mountain Region in Denver, CO; the Pacific
Alaska Region in Seattle, WA; and the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library in
Boston, MA. Documents from other units will be included as other groups of
materials are digitized.
DoxSys, Inc., of Bethesda, Maryland, is the contractor for digitizing the
documents. The work is being done by Micrographic Specialities, Inc., of
Beltsville, Maryland, a subcontractor to DoxSys.
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For PRESS information, please contact the National Archives Public Affairs
staff at (301) 713-6000. Visit the National Archives Home Page on the
World Wide Web at http://www.nara.gov.
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