Respectfully, as a journalism doctoral student at the UMCP campus where NARA II is located, as a library science-archives cognate student, as a science journalist, and as an interested citizen of this planet, I find the notion of any archive, let alone NARA II, reducing hours completely unacceptable. They should instead be aggressively and proactively expanding hours, preferably to as close to 24-7 as possible--most especially NARA II et al. Just ponder what even a small fraction of one minute of the 100-percent-wasted Pentagon-spy-agencies-"homeland security"-national-debt-caused-by-same expenditures would achieve not only toward that goal, but also toward hiring hundreds of more archivists to expedite processing the huge holdings backlogs, create finding aids, put extensive amounts of materials online, quickly unclassify "secret" materials, etc. Unlike the aforementioned unpeaceful USA government entities, NARA actually does something--lots, actually--valuable, constructive, and positive. It nonviolently advances betterment of our civilization, historical and cultural appreciation (including of the many bad chapters), intellectual development, diffusion of knowledge (to borrow from the NGS), etc. Many people doing research travel far and at great hardship and expense to take advantage of NARA II. Most people are by definition not Bill Gates and cannot easily take time off from their main job(s) whenever they want to conduct such research. Some of us are also handicapped, which can greatly complicate access issues and even further bolsters the overwhelming case for much longer hours. An amazingly wonderful facility such as NARA II (and its cousins)--I took one of my favorite graduate courses there with Prof. Ira Chinoy in June-July 2003--should be be accessible to the absolute maximum level that the safety of the collections permits. Hours of at least 16 hours daily, seven days per week, maybe with a few major holidays off, should be the >minimum expectation.< Yes, that change would necessitate hiring more people. But NARA's leaders and allies need to loudly (not in mumbles, as we attending SAA barely heard from the Archivist himself last Saturday afternoon) push for such things, not propose or acquiesce to sneaky and idiotic measures like these drastic and unjustified cutbacks. We need to get the journalistic community in on this, too. The Library of Congress tried to pull this same type of stunt a few years back--it's a tired old tactic of callous or cynical hack bureaucrats who are clearly the wrong people for their positions. Libraries, museums, archives, and other such places together represent a top-level priority for governments to help establish and maintain for the benefit of people everywhere. --ar hogan __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List sponsored by the Society of American Archivists, www.archivists.org. For the terms of participation, please refer to http://www.archivists.org/listservs/arch_listserv_terms.asp. To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to [log in to unmask] In body of message: SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname *or*: UNSUB ARCHIVES To post a message, send e-mail to [log in to unmask] Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html Problems? Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>