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


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