The National Archives Faces the Future

Abstract

THE National Archives of the United States was established in I934, after many years of increasingly persistent agitation by the American Historical Association, government officials, and others for more adequate provision for the administration of the nation's non-current records. The institution was created in the middle of a decade of social and domestic upheaval, which was followed by a period of international chaos and war, and as its tenth birthday approaches the effects of those conditions on the development of the institution are clearly apparent. The history of the National Archives has been one of experimental growth against a background of rapid expansion and alteration of governmental structure and function designed to meet the immediate needs of successive emergencies. Definitive orientation of the agency in its relations to scholarship and to the rest of the government has been impossible. During this decade, however, certain aspects of the records problems with which the National Archives must deal have become obvious, and they have precipitated a new concept of the proper function of a national archives and a leavening of the ideas that gave impetus to the creation of the institution with the knowledge gained from experience. In the first place, the sheer physical volume of records produced by the Federal government is reaching astronomical proportions. The present National Archives Building, was planned less than fifteen years ago in terms of the volume of government records then in existence and of their existing rate of accumulation. Under the circumstances it seemed reasonable to expect that the National Archives Building would suffice to store the permanently valuable records of the government already extant and those to be created for generations to come. In laying the cornerstone of the building President Herbert C. Hoover had given expression to this belief. As events have since proved, the building is large enough to provide for practically all government records of the period prior to the first World War that are worthy of permanent preservation and for some of those of the first World War period. The great difference between expectation and events has largely resulted from