Ensuring Scholarly Access to Government Records and Archives

News and Updates

[Nov 19, 2020] VT-NARA Workshop Rescheduled for Spring '21

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting travel restrictions, our plans for an in-person workshop have been forced to change. As a response, we have developed a workshop schedule that will enable us to deliver the meetings using a digital platform (Zoom). Drawing on lessons learned from our sudden turn to virtual meetings over the past six months, we plan to hold multiple digital meetings that will approximate the equivalent number of hours originally scheduled for the two-day, in-person workshop. 

The online workshops will be held in April-May 2021. A detailed schedule will be made available soon. In the meantime, please visit the Information for the NARA - Virginia Tech AI Conference, April-May 2021 webpage to examine data available in the National Archives Catalog. 

[Mar 6, 2020] VT-NARA Workshop Postponed Due to COVID-19

In light of recent updates concerning the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), we want to provide an update on our schedule workshop of April 22-23, 2020. The National Archives and Records Administration has issued a notice of restriction of non-essential travel. Virginia Tech is currently monitoring developments and seeking guidance from health and advisory authorities such. 

Given the level of uncertainty and growing concerns about best practices for supporting public health, we have decided to postpone the scheduled workshop. We are working on a plan that will enable us to reschedule the meeting at a later time that will be ideal for those who must travel.

Once we have determined a new date for convening the workshop, we will communicate with all participants and will provide support to arrange accommodations for traveling attendees.

In the meantime, we are preparing to distribute background reading material. Once this is disseminated, we hope you will take time to peruse the material.  

Planning Workshop to be held in Arlington, VA on April 22–23

The University Libraries at Virginia Tech, in collaboration with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), will hold a collaborative planning project workshop, the ultimate goal of which is to ensure future access to the massive and ever-growing collection of government records in NARA’s digital Catalog. With generous support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Virginia Tech and NARA will convene a group of archivists, librarians, humanists, technologists, information scientists, and computer scientists for a two-day planning workshop at the Virginia Tech campus in Arlington, Virginia. During this workshop, VT and NARA will identify requirements, develop conceptual models, and devise and articulate a work plan for a subsequent pilot project that will test state-of-the-art tools and technologies to increase the effectiveness of archival programs and broaden public access to the important content in the NARA collections.

Project Leadership

• William A. Ingram (PI), Assistant Dean of University Libraries at Virginia Tech and Director of Library Information Technology
• Sylvester Johnson, Assistant Vice Provost for the Humanities at Virginia Tech and Director, Center for Humanities
• Pamela Wright, Chief Information Officer, NARA

Project Support

This project is supported by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (grant 1910-07229).