Making Access Happen: NARA’s Leadership in the Digital Decade

The history of the National Archives records our longstanding commitment to the mission of preserving and providing access to the permanent records of the federal government. However, in no decade in our history have we provided greater access than in the one that is drawing to a close this month. Together, our staff developed values to collaborate, innovate and learn. Our focus on those values has resulted in unprecedented digital access to our records.

To make digital access happen, you need digital records and we are creating them at a rate that was unthinkable just a few years ago. Thanks to new software and hardware technologies, we are able to scan, index and provide access to digital copies of our records like never before.  Our digitization partnerships have resulted in tens of millions of digital copies of our records that we are making available in our Catalog. Ten years ago, NARA had 300,000 digital copies of our records available through the Catalog. Today we have 97 million and counting.  We are working toward a goal of having 500 million digital copies available through our Catalog by FY24. After that, we are on to our first billion.