Governor Ehrlich visits Archives for Annapolis City Charter Event
by Mimi Calver
On April 20,
Governor Robert
L. Ehrlich, Jr. came to the Archives to help kick off the celebrations
for the
300th anniversary of the granting of the Annapolis City
Charter on
November 22, 1708. Also taking part in the ceremony
were
Annapolis City Alderman for Ward 2, Mike Christman,
and chair of the Annapolis Charter 300 Committee, Chuck Weikel.
State Archivist Ed Papenfuse welcomed the
guests and
talked about the history of the granting of the Charter and the
controversy
that surrounded it at the time.
For the event, a huge
mural
depicting the granting of the Charter was hung from the balcony of the
Archives’ search room. The mural will hang from the outside of the
building for
about three months as part of its tour of all 8 wards of the City
leading up to
the 300th anniversary year in 2008. The mural is a copy of a
painting by local artist Lee Boynton that hangs in the Annapolis City
Council
Chamber.
Also on exhibit was the
original 1708 Charter that has not been on display since the 275th
anniversary celebrations in 1983. The Archives’ paper conservation
staff will
conserve the Charter for exhibition in 2008. Dr.
Papenfuse presented the
governor with a framed
copy of the Charter, made from a high resolution scan of the original,
to hang
in the State House near the portrait of Queen Anne who granted it.
MARAC Conference in Baltimore
The Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives
Conference (MARAC) held
its spring meeting in Baltimore April
20-22,
returning to Maryland
for the first time since 2002. The
conference was a major success in both attendance (over 300
registrants) and
program, especially the plenary address on the future of the National
Archives given
by Dr. Allen Weinstein, Archivist of the United States. Dr.
Edward Papenfuse, Maryland State
Archivist and a founding member of MARAC, graciously introduced
Professor
Weinstein, and prefigured many of Weinstein’s remarks on the problems
facing
the profession with regard to access and preservation.
(full
text of Dr. Papenfuse’s remarks given below).
Dr.
Weinstein spoke on many
topics, but captured the greatest attention as he pledged a transparent
audit
of the steps that led NARA to withdraw
and
re-classify previously available documents at the request of the Air
Force and
a re-commitment of NARA
to public access to public records with responsible stewardship of
national
security concerns.
Dr. Papenfuse was not the only MSA staffer to
contribute to the success of the meeting. Michael
McCormick, Director of Reference Services, served
as co-chair of
the Program Committee, putting together the educational sessions that
form the
core of such a conference. Jennifer
Hafner, Deputy Director of Research and Student Outreach, assisted on
the even
more demanding Local Arrangements Committee which is responsible for
the
venue, scheduling of rooms, AV support, and various logistical
challenges any group of 300 people can present.
Jen
also provided inspiration and instruction in the social
highlight of the meeting, an evening of duckpin bowling, a
true Bawlmer experience.
The venue proved as intriguing as many of the
presentations. The Tremont Plaza Hotel has
acquired and refurbished the
former Baltimore
Masonic Temple
as the Tremont Grand conference center. A $25
million dollar project has restored the architectural majesties of
the meeting rooms and banquet halls. Attention
to detail in embellishments, tromp d’oeil
painting, and stained
glass restoration in styles ranging from Neo-Classical to Arabesque
commanded
attention.
Even so, topics were equally compelling, ranging from the
post-Modern literary criticism of Jacques Derrida and his
deconstruction of
record keeping to community based documentation via oral histories or
university/high school partnerships. Again, MSA
staffers led and contributed to
engrossing sessions.
On Friday Vicki Lee and Jenn Cruickshank of the MSA
Conservation Lab partnered with Kathleen Ludwig and Hilary Kaplan of
the
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to present In Katrina’s Wake: Disasters Do Happen. Vicki
chaired this session, and provided an
overview of how MSA staff responds to the challenges of disaster
locally and
throughout the state. Jenn
presented a short course in the responses and resources required to be
prepared
for emergencies. Ludwig and Kaplan took
us on a photo tour of the NARA
effort to assist with the recovery and conservation of the Orleans
Parish
government records that had been submerged in six feet of water and
inaccessible
for two months after the flooding of the city.
The
session dramatically demonstrated how rapidly and unexpectedly
emergencies arise.
On Saturday MSA staff chaired two panels.
Chris
Haley, Director of the
Study of the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland,
led African American Documents: Enslaved,
Free and In-between which specifically discussed what types of
documents
describing the African American experience
might be
found in the mid-Atlantic states. Dr. David
Taft Terry, formerly of the Archives and now executive director of the
Reginald
Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History, Karen James of the
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, and Don Wilson of the
Ruth E
Lloyd Information Center, Prince William Public Library spoke to the
questions
of research in the “peculiar institution” and resistance to it. The MSA Underground Railroad web site was
highlighted as a new tool for examining the demographics of
slavery.
Finally, Robert Barnes, Reference Archivist, was joined by
June Lloyd of the York
County, PA, Heritage Trust and Ann Toohey of the Library of Congress to
discuss Archivists, Librarians, and
Genealogists: Forging New Alliances. The era
of electronic records is re-shaping genealogical
demand as
dramatically as Alex Haley’s Roots
created it. Resources such as
mdvitalrec.net,
Ancestry.com, and on-line
databases of source documents such as mdlandrec.net and
NARA’s
Access to Archival Documents are making
a trip to the physical archives seemingly less necessary.
Barnes and the other panelists discussed how
these changes require archivists to proactively work with librarians
and
researchers to insure that scare resources are not expended upon
duplication,
and that archives concentrate on acquiring and making available unique
materials.
The conference proved highly successful, and marked the
largest participation in a MARAC meeting of MSA staff in years. Networking such as these events allow is an
invaluable asset to professional development.
MARAC
is considering a return to the metropolitan Washington
region in the fall of 2008, and
MSA staff will surely play an important role.
Ed Papenfuse’s
Remarks at
MARAC to Introduce the Archivist of the U.S.
On April 21, Ed Papenfuse appeared at the Mid-Atlantic Regional
Archives Conference and gave the following remarks as the introduction
of the Archivist of the United States, Dr. Allen Weinstein.
It is my privilege this
morning to introduce Allen Weinstein. Professor Allen Weinstein was
confirmed
as the ninth Archivist of the United States in February
2005. Dr. Weinstein,
a former Professor of History who has held positions at Boston University, Georgetown University,
and Smith College,
is the author of numerous essays and books, including The
Story of America
(2002), The Haunted Wood: Soviet
Espionage in America—The Stalin Era (1999), Perjury:
The Hiss-Chambers Case (1978 & 1997), and Freedom
and Crisis: An American History
(3rd edition, 1981).
From 1985 to
2003, he served
as President of The Center for Democracy, a non-profit foundation based
in Washington, DC,
that he created in 1985 to promote and strengthen the democratic
process. His
international awards include the United Nations Peace Medal (1986), The
Council of Europe’s Silver Medal (1990 and 1996), and awards from the
presidents of Nicaragua
and Romania
for assisting them on the road to democracy.
His other awards and
fellowships have included two Senior Fulbright Lectureships, an
American
Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, the Commonwealth Fund
Lectureship at
the University of London, and a Woodrow Wilson
International Center
for Scholars Fellowship.
Dr. Weinstein is no stranger
to controversy. His scholarship led him to conclude that a former
favorite
son and rising international star of this great state of
Maryland, Alger
Hiss, was a Soviet Spy, although a few of us still have lingering
doubts about
the
conclusiveness of the
evidence.
While some latitude will
inevitably be allowed the people we elect to office to make decisions
concerning access to the records they create for the period of time
they are in
office, we ought not to permit them to do so beyond a reasonably
prescribed
time limit once they are out of office. Since becoming Archivist,
Dr.
Weinstein has had to cope with a former National Security Advisor who
saw fit to
take some of the records of his office home, and over the past few
weeks he has
been drawn into the fray over reclassification of records, pushing them
back
under the shroud of inaccessibility, and prompting the New York
Times on Sunday to run a piece
by Scott Shane entitled "Why the Secrecy? Only the Bureaucrats
Know." As the Washington
Post reported on Tuesday, Dr. Weinstein took
decisive
action, eliminating reclassification as a secret policy of the National
Archives.
In a democracy such as
ours, a democracy which Dr. Weinstein has dedicated his public
career to
espousing its virtues around the world, there needs to be a time, a
persistently forward moving date, after which all that has been
identified as
permanently valuable information is totally free,
uncensored, and
accessible. There should be no turning back.
Apart from the question of
what of public records should remain secret and for how long, Dr.
Weinstein's
most daunting task is mastering the complexities of creating a
permanent electronic archives. Under his leadership and that of
his
predecessor the budget for creating and providing a permanent National
Electronic Archives has grown
substantially.
As yet there is no such
thing as a permanent electronic record in a perpetually authoritative
retrieval
environment. Jstor, the cooperative
electronic
journal web site, probably comes as close as any experiment in
establishing
one, and our efforts to place all land records in Maryland online may
prove a
viable model for the future. We now have 160,000,000 million archivally secure and accountable land record
images on
line, and counting, encompassed in 120 terrabytes of live archival storage. This is but
a drop in
the bucket of the essential electronic records of governance, about
which
historians, reporters, and the general public are clamoring for
access.
Dr. Weinstein has made it
clear that to answer the most pressing questions of
declassification and
access to permanent records requires historians, archivists,
librarians, and
the public in general to focus on what we currently save, why we save
it,
and how to save it permanently electronically from the moment of its
creation.
It will do us no good to worry about preservation and access years
after the
outmoded system that created the electronic record is no longer
functioning and
the record is as difficult to decode as the Venona telegrams
with which Dr. Weinstein is so familiar in the Alger Hiss case. When we
get to
the point of the Archives at the State and National level being the
direct and immediate
repository of all permanent electronic records regardless of their
security
clearance and timing of accessibility, then the future of a truthful
history
and a well-functioning democracy will be secure.
Nearly 40 years ago, on the
first day of my first real job out of graduate school as an Assistant
Editor on
the American Historical Review, I was shown to my office and told to
use it
wisely. It had just been vacated by a distinguished visiting,
younger
scholar, by
the name of Allen Weinstein of whom there were great
expectations. When I visited my old office not too long ago for a
meeting at
the AHA headquarters in Washington, all other previous occupants of
that office
had long been forgotten, and I was told with pride by the current
occupant that
he had the privilege of sitting in Allen Weinstein's chair. The
wisest
course for me at the moment is to do what I was asked to do, and that
is to
present to you the 9th Archivist of the United States, Dr. Allen
Weinstein.
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