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Urgent: Oppose NARA Facility Closures

Mikala Narlock

— 1 min read
Urgent: Oppose NARA Facility Closures
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

We recently learned that some regional facilities of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) are being targeted for closures, including the ones in San Francisco/San Bruno, CA and Chicago. These facilities hold important records especially to people in those areas. Among the 100,000 cubic feet of documents in the San Bruno facility -- thousands of which have not been digitized -- there are: 

  • hundreds of thousands of immigration and naturalization materials for people from over eighty countries, including extensive Chinese Exclusion case files -- one of the most comprehensive collections of files connected to the historical immigration through Angel Island; 
  • German, Italian, and Japanese American internment files; 
  • Public Health records; 
  • Mexican Land grant cases; 
  • Hawaiian Birth Certificates and citizenship cases; 
  • and arrival case files for Russian Jews and other immigrants from throughout the world. 

Closing these facilities will significantly impede local community access to invaluable materials, including genealogists, educators, researchers, and the general public. We stand by community requests to keep the items as close as possible to where these histories happened.

Get involved

  • If you feel inclined, we invite you to contact Edward Frost, Acting Archivist of the United States (ArchivistOfTheUnitedStates@nara.gov). 
    • Be sure to cc the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate committees with NARA oversight and the staffers. These are the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. More details can be found in the draft letter linked below.
  • You can also contact your senator and representative. There is a draft letter you can use, and you can take inspiration from the collaborative statement from The Council of State Archivists (CoSA), the National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators (NAGARA), and the Society of American Archivists (SAA). 
    • Edits and adaptations to the draft letter are welcomed. Make YOUR voice heard!
  • Learn more about the effort at https://www.saveournationalarchives.org/

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