National Archives and Records Administration
The National Archives and Records Administration is an independent agency of the United States government charged with preserving and documenting government and historical records and with increasing public access to those documents, which comprise the National Archives. NARA is responsible for maintaining and publishing the authentic and authoritative copies of acts of Congress, presidential directives, federal regulations; the NARA transmits votes of the Electoral College to Congress. The Archivist of the United States is the chief official overseeing the operation of the National Archives and Records Administration; the Archivist not only maintains the official documentation of the passage of amendments to the U. S. Constitution by state legislatures, but has the authority to declare when the constitutional threshold for passage has been reached, therefore when an act has become an amendment; the Office of the Federal Register publishes the Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, United States Statutes at Large, among others.
It administers the Electoral College. The National Historical Publications and Records Commission —the agency's grant-making arm—awards funds to state and local governments and private archives and universities, other nonprofit organizations to preserve and publish historical records. Since 1964, the NHPRC has awarded some 4,500 grants; the Office of Government Information Services is a Freedom of Information Act resource for the public and the government. Congress has charged NARA with reviewing FOIA policies and compliance of Federal agencies and to recommend changes to FOIA. NARA's mission includes resolving FOIA disputes between Federal agencies and requesters; each branch and agency of the U. S. government was responsible for maintaining its own documents, which resulted in the loss and destruction of records. Congress established the National Archives Establishment in 1934 to centralize federal record keeping, with the Archivist of the United States as chief administrator; the National Archives was incorporated with GSA in 1949.
The first Archivist, R. D. W. Connor, began serving in 1934; as a result of a first Hoover Commission recommendation, in 1949 the National Archives was placed within the newly formed General Services Administration. The Archivist served as a subordinate official to the GSA Administrator until the National Archives and Records Administration became an independent agency on April 1, 1985. In March 2006, it was revealed by the Archivist of the United States in a public hearing that a memorandum of understanding between NARA and various government agencies existed to "reclassify", i.e. withdraw from public access, certain documents in the name of national security, to do so in a manner such that researchers would not be to discover the process. An audit indicated that more than one third withdrawn since 1999 did not contain sensitive information; the program was scheduled to end in 2007. In 2010, Executive Order 13526 created the National Declassification Center to coordinate declassification practices across agencies, provide secure document services to other agencies, review records in NARA custody for declassification.
NARA's holdings are classed into "record groups" reflecting the governmental department or agency from which they originated. Records include paper documents, still pictures, motion pictures, electronic media. Archival descriptions of the permanent holdings of the federal government in the custody of NARA are stored in the National Archives Catalog; the archival descriptions include information on traditional paper holdings, electronic records, artifacts. As of December 2012, the catalog consisted of about 10 billion logical data records describing 527,000 artifacts and encompassing 81% of NARA's records. There are 922,000 digital copies of digitized materials. Most records at NARA are in the public domain, as works of the federal government are excluded from copyright protection. However, records from other sources may still be protected by donor agreements. Executive Order 13526 directs originating agencies to declassify documents if possible before shipment to NARA for long-term storage, but NARA stores some classified documents until they can be declassified.
Its Information Security Oversight Office monitors and sets policy for the U. S. government's security classification system. Many of NARA's most requested records are used for genealogy research; this includes census records from 1790 to 1940, ships' passenger lists, naturalization records. Archival Recovery Teams investigate the theft of records; the most well known facility of the National Archives and Records Administration is the National Archives Building, located north of the National Mall on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D. C.. A sister facility, known as the National Archives at College Park was opened 1994 near the University of Maryland, College Park; the Washington National Records Center located in the Washington, D. C. metropolitan area, is a large warehouse facility where federal records that are still under the control of the creating agency are stored. Federal government agencies pay a yearly fee for storage at the facility. In accordance with federal records schedules, documents at WNRC are transferred to the legal custody of the National Archives after a certain time.
Temporary records at WNRC are
73rd United States Congress
The seventy-third United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D. C. from March 4, 1933, to January 3, 1935, during the first two years of Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency; because of the newly ratified 20th Amendment, the duration of this Congress, along with the term of office of those elected to it, was shortened by the interval between January 3 and March 4, 1935. The apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives was based on the Fifteenth Census of the United States in 1930. Both chambers had a Democratic majority. March 4, 1933: Franklin D. Roosevelt became President of the United States January 3, 1934: The second session of 73rd Congress convened as mandated by the Twentieth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified one year earlier August 19, 1934: House Speaker Henry Thomas Rainey died of a heart attack.
The House had completed its work for this Congress and had adjourned. No Speaker was elected until the next Congress; the first session of Congress, known as the "Hundred Days", took place before the regular seating and was called by President Roosevelt to pass two acts: March 9, 1933: The Emergency Banking Act was enacted within four hours of its introduction. It was prompted by the "bank holiday" and was the first step in Roosevelt's "first hundred days" of the New Deal; the Act was drafted in large part by officials appointed by the Hoover administration. The bill provided for the Treasury Department to initiate reserve requirements and a federal bailout to large failing institutions, it removed the United States from the Gold Standard. All banks had to undergo a federal inspection to deem. Within a week 1/3 of the banks re-opened in the United States and faith was, in large part, restored in the banking system; the act had few opponents, only taking fire from the farthest left elements of Congress who wanted to nationalize banks altogether.
March 10, 1933: The Economy Act of 1933. Roosevelt, in sending this act to Congress, warned that if it did not pass, the country faced a billion dollar deficit; the act balanced the federal budget by cutting the salaries of government employees and cutting pensions to veterans by as much as 15 percent. It intended to reassure the deficit hawks. Although the act was protested by left-leaning members of congress, it passed by an overwhelming margin; the session passed several other major pieces of legislation: March 31, 1933: The Civilian Conservation Corps Reforestation Relief Act established the Civilian Conservation Corps as a means to combat unemployment and poverty. May 12, 1933: The Agricultural Adjustment Act was part of a plan developed by Roosevelt's Secretary of Agriculture, Henry A. Wallace, was designed to protect American farmers from the uncertainties of the depression through subsidies and production controls; the act laid the frame for long-term government control in the planning of the agricultural sector.
In 1936 the act was ruled unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court because it taxed one group to pay for another. May 12, 1933: The Federal Emergency Relief Act established the Federal Emergency Relief Administration which develop public works projects to give work to the unemployed. May 18, 1933: The Tennessee Valley Authority Act created the Tennessee Valley Authority to relieve the Tennessee Valley by a series of public works projects. June 5, 1933: The Securities Act of 1933 established the Securities Exchange Commission as a way for the government to prevent a repeat of the Stock Market Crash of 1929. June 12, 1933: The Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 was a follow up to the Glass–Steagall Act of 1932. Both acts sought to make banking less prone to speculation; the 1933 act, established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. June 16, 1933: The National Industrial Recovery Act was an anti-deflation scheme promoted by the Chamber of Commerce that reversed anti-trust laws and permit trade associations to cooperate in stabilizing prices within their industries while making businesses ensure that the incomes of workers would rise along with their prices.
It guaranteed to workers of the right of collective bargaining and helped spur major union organizing drives in major industries. In case consumer buying power lagged behind, thereby defeating the administration's initiatives, the NIRA created the Public Works Administration, a major program of public works spending designed to alleviate unemployment, moreover to transfer funds to certain beneficiaries; the NIRA established the most important, but least successful provision: a new federal agency known as the National Recovery Administration, which attempted to stabilize prices and wages through cooperative "code authorities" involving government and labor. The NIRA was seen hailed as a miracle, responding to the needs of labor, business and the deflation crisis; the "sick chicken case" led to the Supreme Court invalidating NIRA in 1935. March 24, 1934: The Tydings–McDuffie Act provided for self-government for the Commonwealth of the Philippines and a pathway to independence. June 6, 1934: The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 grew out of the Securities Act of 1933 and regulated participation in financial markets.
June 6, 1934: The National Firearms Act of 1934 regulated m
Pipe rolls
The Pipe rolls, sometimes called the Great rolls, or the Great Rolls of the Pipe, are a collection of financial records maintained by the English Exchequer, or Treasury, its successors. The earliest date from the 12th century, the series extends complete, from until 1833, they form the oldest continuous series of records concerning English governance kept by the English and United Kingdom governments, covering a span of about 700 years. The early medieval ones are useful for historical study, as they are some of the earliest financial records available from the Middle Ages. A similar set of records was developed for Normandy, ruled by the English kings from 1066 to 1205, but the Norman Pipe rolls have not survived in a continuous series like the English, they were the records of the yearly audits performed by the Exchequer of the accounts and payments presented to the Treasury by the sheriffs and other royal officials. They record not only payments made to the government, but debts owed to the crown and disbursements made by royal officials.
Although they recorded much of the royal income, they did not record all types of income, nor did they record all expenditures, so they are not speaking a budget. The Pipe Roll Society, formed in 1883, has published the Pipe rolls up until 1224; the Pipe rolls are named after the "pipe" shape formed by the rolled up parchments on which the records were written. There is no evidence to support the theory that they were named pipes for the fact that they "piped" the money into the Treasury, nor for the claim that they got their name from resembling a wine cask, or pipe of wine, they were referred to as the roll of the treasury, or the great roll of accounts, the great roll of the pipe. The Pipe rolls are the records of the audits of the sheriffs' accounts conducted at Michaelmas by the Exchequer, or English treasury; until the chancery records began in the reign of King John of England, they were the only continuous set of records kept by the English government. They are not a complete record of government and royal finances, however, as they do not record all sources of income, only the accounts of the sheriffs and a few other sources of income.
Some of the payments that did not fall under the Exchequer were recorded in a Pipe roll. Neither do the Pipe rolls record all payments made by the exchequer, they were not created as a budget, nor were they speaking records of receipts, but rather they are records of the audit of the accounts rendered. Although the rolls use an accounting system, it is not one that would be familiar to modern accountants. In their early form, they record all debts owed to the Crown, whether from feudal dues or from other sources; because many debts to the king were allowed to be paid off in installments, it is necessary to search more than one set of rolls for a complete history of a debt. If a debt was not paid off in one year, the remainder of the amount owed was transferred to the next year, they did not record the full amount of debts incurred in previous years, only what was paid that year and what was still owed. Besides the sheriffs, others who submitted accounts for the audit included some bailiffs of various honours, town officials, the custodians of ecclesiastical and feudal estates.
The earliest surviving Pipe roll in a mature form, dates from 1129–30, the continuous series begins in 1155–56, continued for seven hundred years. Combined with the Domesday Survey, the Pipe rolls contributed to the centralisation of financial records by the Norman kings of England, ahead of contemporary Western European monarchies; the exact form of the records, kept in a roll instead of a book, was unique to England, although why England kept some of its administrative records in this form is unclear. A set of Norman rolls, drafted differently, are extant in a few years for the reigns of Kings Henry II and Richard I, who ruled the Duchy of Normandy in France, it is believed that the Norman rolls were started about the same time as the English, but due to lack of survival of the earlier Norman rolls, it is unclear when they did start. An Irish Exchequer produced Irish Pipe rolls, much like the English Pipe rolls, the earliest surviving Irish Pipe roll, that of 1212, does not appear to be the first produced.
The Dialogus de Scaccario or Dialogue concerning the Exchequer, written in about 1178, details the workings of the Exchequer and gives an early account of how the Pipe rolls were created. The Dialogue was written by Richard FitzNeal, the son of Nigel of Ely, Treasurer for both Henry I and Henry II of England. According to the Dialogue, the Pipe rolls were the responsibility of the clerk of the Treasurer, called the Clerk of the Pipe and the clerk of the pells. FitzNeal wrote his work to explain the inner workings of the Exchequer, in it he lists a number of different types of rolls used by the Treasury, he describes the creation of the Pipe rolls and how they are used. The Dialogue states that the Pipe rolls, along with Domesday Book and other records, were kept in the treasury, because they were required for daily use by the Exchequer clerks; the main source of income recorded on the Pipe rolls was the county farm, or income derived from lands held by the king. Occasional sources
Ancien Régime
The Ancien Régime was the political and social system of the Kingdom of France from the Late Middle Ages until 1789, when hereditary monarchy and the feudal system of French nobility were abolished by the French Revolution. The Ancien Régime was ruled by Bourbon dynasties; the term is used to refer to the similar feudal systems of the time elsewhere in Europe. The administrative and social structures of the Ancien Régime were the result of years of state-building, legislative acts, internal conflicts, civil wars, but they remained and the Valois Dynasty's attempts at re-establishing control over the scattered political centres of the country were hindered by the Huguenot Wars. Much of the reigns of Henry IV and Louis XIII and the early years of Louis XIV were focused on administrative centralization. Despite, the notion of "absolute monarchy" and the efforts by the kings to create a centralized state, the Kingdom of France retained its irregularities: authority overlapped and nobles struggled to retain autonomy.
The need for centralization in this period was directly linked to the question of royal finances and the ability to wage war. The internal conflicts and dynastic crises of the 16th and 17th centuries and the territorial expansion of France in the 17th century demanded great sums which needed to be raised through taxes, such as the land tax and the tax on salt and by contributions of men and service from the nobility. One key to this centralization was the replacing of personal patronage systems organized around the king and other nobles by institutional systems around the state; the creation of intendants—representatives of royal power in the provinces—did much to undermine local control by regional nobles. The same was true of the greater reliance shown by the royal court on the noblesse de robe as judges and royal counselors; the creation of regional parlements had the same goal of facilitating the introduction of royal power into newly assimilated territories, but as the parlements gained in self-assurance, they began to be sources of disunity.
The term in French means "old regime" or "former regime". However, most English language books use the French term Ancien Régime; the term first appeared in print in English in 1794, was pejorative in nature. It conjured up a society so encrusted with anachronisms that only a shock of great violence could free the living organism within. Institutionally torpid, economically immobile, culturally atrophied and stratified, this'old regime' was incapable of self-modernization."More ancien régime refers to any political and social system having the principal features of the French Ancien Régime. Europe's other anciens régimes had diverse fates; the Nine Years' War was a major conflict between France and a European-wide coalition of Austria and the Holy Roman Empire, the Dutch Republic, Spain and Savoy. It was fought on the European continent and the surrounding seas, in Ireland, North America, India, it was the first global war. Louis XIV had emerged from the Franco-Dutch War in 1678 as the most powerful monarch in Europe, an absolute ruler who had won numerous military victories.
Using a combination of aggression and quasilegal means, Louis XIV set about extending his gains to stabilize and strengthen France's frontiers, culminating in the brief War of the Reunions. The resulting Truce of Ratisbon guaranteed France's new borders for 20 years, but Louis XIV's subsequent actions – notably his revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 – led to the deterioration of his military and political dominance. Louis XIV's decision to cross the Rhine in September 1688 was designed to extend his influence and pressure the Holy Roman Empire into accepting his territorial and dynastic claims, but when Leopold I and the German princes resolved to resist, when the States General and William III brought the Dutch and the English into the war against France, the French King at last faced a powerful coalition aimed at curtailing his ambitions; the main fighting took place around France's borders, in the Spanish Netherlands, the Rhineland, Duchy of Savoy, Catalonia. The fighting favoured Louis XIV's armies, but by 1696, his country was in the grip of an economic crisis.
The Maritime Powers were financially exhausted, when Savoy defected from the alliance, all parties were keen for a negotiated settlement. By the terms of the Treaty of Ryswick, Louis XIV retained the whole of Alsace, but he was forced to return Lorraine to its ruler and give up any gains on the right bank of the Rhine. Louis XIV accepted William III as the rightful King of England, while the Dutch acquired their barrier fortress system in the Spanish Netherlands to help secure their own borders. However, with the ailing and childless Charles II of Spain approaching his end, a new conflict over the inheritance of the Spanish Empire would soon embroil Louis XIV and the Grand Alliance in a final war – the War of the Spanish Succession. Spain had a number of major assets, apart from its homeland itself, it controlled important territory in the New World. S
The National Archives (United Kingdom)
The National Archives is a non-ministerial government department. Its parent department is the Department for Culture and Sport of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, it is the official archive for England and Wales. There are separate national archives for Northern Ireland. TNA was four separate organisations: the Public Record Office, the Historical Manuscripts Commission, the Office of Public Sector Information and Her Majesty's Stationery Office; the Public Record Office still exists as a legal entity, as the enabling legislation has not been modified, documents held by the institution thus continue to be cited by many scholars as part of the PRO. Since 2008, TNA has hosted the former UK Statute Law Database, now known as legislation.gov.uk. It is institutional policy to include the definite article, with an initial capital letter, in its name but this practice is not always followed in the non-specialist media; the National Archives is based in Kew in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames in south-west London.
The building was opened in 1977 as an additional home for the public records, which were held in a building on Chancery Lane. The site was a World War I hospital, used by several government departments, it is near to Kew Gardens Underground station. Until its closure in March 2008, the Family Records Centre in Islington was run jointly by The National Archives and the General Register Office; the National Archives has an additional office in Norwich, for former OPSI staff. There is an additional record storage facility in the worked-out parts of Winsford Rock Salt Mine, Cheshire. For earlier history, see Public Record Office; the National Archives was created in 2003 by combining the Public Record Office and the Historical Manuscripts Commission and is a non-ministerial department reporting to the Minister of State for digital policy. On 31 October 2006, The National Archives merged with the Office of Public Sector Information, which itself contained Her Majesty's Stationery Office, a part of the Cabinet Office.
The name remained The National Archives. 1991–2005: Sarah Tyacke 2005–2010: Natalie Ceeney 2010–2013: Oliver Morley 2013–2014: Clem Brohier 2014–present: Jeff James TNA claims it is "at the heart of information policy—setting standards and supporting innovation in information and records management across the UK, providing a practical framework of best practice for opening up and encouraging the re-use of public sector information. This work helps inform today's decisions and ensure that they become tomorrow's permanent record." It has a number of key roles in information policy: Policy – advising government on information practice and policy, on issues from record creation through to its reuse Selection – selecting which documents to store Preservation – ensuring the documents remain in as good a condition as possible Access – providing the public with the opportunity to view the documents Advice – advising the public and other archives and archivists around the world on how to care for documents Intellectual property management – TNA manages crown copyright for the UK Regulation – ensuring that other public sector organisations adhere to both the public records act and the PSI reuse regulations.
The National Archives has long had a role of oversight and leadership for the entire archives sector and archives profession in the UK, including local government and non-governmental archives. Under the Public Records Act 1958 it is responsible for overseeing the appropriate custody of certain non-governmental public records in England and Wales. Under the 2003 Historical Manuscripts Commission Warrant it has responsibility for investigating and reporting on non-governmental records and archives of all kinds throughout the United Kingdom. In October 2011, when the Museums and Archives Council was wound up, TNA took over its responsibilities in respect of archives in England, including providing information and advice to ministers on archives policy; the National Archives now sees this part of its role as being "to enhance the'archival health of the nation'". The National Archives is the UK government's official archive, "containing 1000 years of history from Domesday Book to the present", with records from parchment and paper scrolls through to digital files and archived websites.
The material held at Kew includes the following: Documents from the central courts of law from the twelfth century onwards, including the Court of King's Bench, the Court of Common Pleas, the Court of Chancery, the Court of Exchequer, the Supreme Court of Judicature, the Central Criminal Court and many other courts Medieval, early modern and modern records of central government A large and disparate collection of maps and architectural drawings Records for family historians including wills, naturalisation certificates and criminal records Service and operational records of the armed forces War Office, Admiralty etc. Foreign Office and Colonial Office correspondence and files Cabinet papers and Home Office records Statistics of the Board of Trade The surviving records of the English railway companies, transferred from the British Railways Record OfficeThere is a museum, which displays key documents such as Domesday Book and has exhibitions on various topics using material from the collections.
The collections held by the National A
Archive
An archive is an accumulation of historical records or the physical place they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime, are kept to show the function of that person or organization. Professional archivists and historians understand archives to be records that have been and generated as a product of regular legal, administrative, or social activities, they have been metaphorically defined as "the secretions of an organism", are distinguished from documents that have been consciously written or created to communicate a particular message to posterity. In general, archives consist of records that have been selected for permanent or long-term preservation on grounds of their enduring cultural, historical, or evidentiary value. Archival records are unpublished and always unique, unlike books or magazines for which many identical copies exist; this means that archives are quite distinct from libraries with regard to their functions and organization, although archival collections can be found within library buildings.
A person who works in archives is called an archivist. The study and practice of organizing and providing access to information and materials in archives is called archival science; the physical place of storage can be referred to an archives, or a repository. When referring to historical records or the places they are kept, the plural form archives is chiefly used; the computing use of the term'archive' should not be confused with the record-keeping meaning of the term. First attested in English in early 17th century, the word archive is derived from the French archives, in turn from Latin archīum or archīvum, the romanized form of the Greek ἀρχεῖον, "public records, town-hall, residence, or office of chief magistrates", itself from ἀρχή, amongst others "magistracy, government", which comes from the verb ἄρχω, "to begin, govern"; the word developed from the Greek ἀρχεῖον, which refers to the home or dwelling of the Archon, in which important official state documents were filed and interpreted under the authority of the Archon.
The adjective formed from archive is archival. The practice of keeping official documents is old. Archaeologists have discovered archives of hundreds of clay tablets going back to the third and second millennia BC in sites like Ebla, Amarna, Hattusas and Pylos; these discoveries have been fundamental to know ancient alphabets, languages and politics. Archives were well developed by the ancient Chinese, the ancient Greeks, ancient Romans. However, they have been lost, since documents written on materials like papyrus and paper deteriorated at a faster pace, unlike their stone tablet counterparts. Archives of churches and cities from the Middle Ages survive and have kept their official status uninterruptedly until now, they are the basic tool for historical research on these ages. England after 1066 developed archival research methods; the Swiss developed archival systems after 1450. Modern archival thinking has many roots from the French Revolution; the French National Archives, who possess the largest archival collection in the world, with records going as far back as 625 A.
D. were created in 1790 during the French Revolution from various government and private archives seized by the revolutionaries. Historians, lawyers, demographers and others conduct research at archives; the research process at each archive is unique, depends upon the institution that houses the archive. While there are many kinds of archives, the most recent census of archivists in the United States identifies five major types: academic, government, non-profit, other. There are four main areas of inquiry involved with archives: material technologies, organizing principles, geographic locations, tangled embodiments of humans and non-humans; these areas help to further categorize. Archives in colleges and other educational facilities are housed within a library, duties may be carried out by an archivist. Academic archives exist to serve the academic community. An academic archive may contain materials such as the institution's administrative records and professional papers of former professors and presidents, memorabilia related to school organizations and activities, items the academic library wishes to remain in a closed-stack setting, such as rare books or thesis copies.
Access to the collections in these archives is by prior appointment only. Users of academic archives can be undergraduates, graduate students and staff, scholarly researchers, the general public. Many academic archives work with alumni relations departments or other campus institutions to help raise funds for their library or school. Qualifications for employment may vary. Entry-level positions require an undergraduate diploma, but archivists hold graduate degrees in history or library science. Subject-area specialization becomes more common in higher ranking positions. Archives located in for-profit institutions are those owned by a private business. Examples of prominent business archives in the United States include Coca-Cola (which owns the
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