Eric G. Grundset wrote:
"Both days I had plenty of extra time to spend
getting a new card and neither day (the first one being a Saturday) was
the place busy at all (in fact, on that Saturday it was empty of researchers).
This certainly is not very good public service either."
Maarja, Eric, et al.,
I feel your pain. I once wanted
to use NARA's reading room on a Saturday, so I went to their website to
get the hours, etc. To my surprise, they don't pull records from
the stacks on Saturdays. You have to request the records you want
on the day before. This is what their website says:
No records are retrieved from the stacks on Saturday or
in the evening. If research is conducted on Saturday or after the last
retrieval time, advance arrangements must be made to have records available
by calling the reference numbers below. To confirm that records were retrieved,
call (301) 837-1964.
I pity those researchers who come to
Washington from out-of-the-area, don't know this, and learn it when they
arrive at the Archives on Saturday morning.
Never mind that not all NARA's finding
aids are available online and that most are available only onsite. Or
that many requests for records come back as "Not on Shelf," or
that most archival research leads to dead-ends. Just getting to the
Archives at College Park is no easy feat, and especially on Saturdays using
public transit. If you have to trek out there to search the finding
aids to find out which records you'll need the next day, then you might
as well do your research the same day you're there.
So I'm not surprised that NARA was empty
when Eric visited on a Saturday. One would think an astute manager
would look at the visitor statistics for Saturdays and ask themself, "What's
going on here? Why is no one using the Archives on Saturdays?"
Well, duh! Take a look at your arcane procedures, dude.
NARA has thrown up way too many hurdles
for researchers under the guise of security or lack of funding. I
can just imagine the public outrage if my local public library operated
as does NARA. It's no wonder that so many people have a negative
image of public servants. All it takes is one bad apple or one bad
experience.
I'm now stepping off my soapbox and
getting back to work. But I do feel much better already.....
Harry
Harry G. Heiss, Archivist
Bureau of the Public Debt
Department of the Treasury
799 Ninth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20239
[log in to unmask]
202.504.3516 [voice]
202.504.3630 [fax]
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