001check what's going on face Cold Play right here I pledge allegiance discrimination under God indivisible with liberty and just ready talk right face forward mark s oh yeah boom yep good evening and thank you all for joining us this evening I want to especially give a warm welcome to our high Beverly High School class of 1963 alumni here with us this evening [Applause] a green vice president of the Beverly Education Foundation we're celebrating 26 years of a unique partnership with the Beverly Public Schools and you bringing schools and citizens together to improve public education to help children strive for excellence and to expand their knowledge tonight we've seen a great example of the Beverly Public Schools with our Color Guard these were all volunteer children students along with major Andrew Walters and I just would
002like to call their names out this evening Cadet first sergeant Bancroft Cadet Sergeant Maura Cadet PFC salmon and Cadet private right [Applause] all know that good schools aren't essential for the well-being of students and to the Civic health of our communities as an independent non-profit organization the Beverly Education Foundation actively fundraises in order to award grants for projects that impact a significant number of students while tied to system-wide goals that support education curriculum augment professional development and raise the profile of public education one of our campaigns honor a teacher in the spring is just a wonderful way to show the Excellence of our educators in addition we secure corporate donors and we have just secured 10 years of funding from the Cummings Foundation to bolster teacher support professional development better connections between teachers parents and
003students and to provide additional Innovative programs to prepare Beverly students for their futures we were an early supporter of the one to one at this new high school 12 years ago this is a program that is a lease to own and you you pay in for four years and you the student walks away with a a a a computer many children were unable to to participate in those leases and the foundation helped by subsidizing leases for them thereby contributing to the quality of Education in Beverly an equal opportunity of all students that is how we got to know our our speaker tonight David osterio tonight we're going to be led and moderated by a very uh very neat young man jfoss Doug Walker Sarah a l o Lorinda visnick and I met Jay almost two
004years ago he he interviewed us on his show raising your inner voice uh at the North Shore 104.9 and he's graciously agreed to lead this discussion tonight um uh Jay in addition to doing this currently runs his own DJ business does concert lighting at the Shannon Lou performance center in Rockport and is the audio visual manager at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in Hamilton where he lives with his wife two sons a dog and nine chickens and if you'd like the breakdown of the chickens I have them thank you much so much for today I'll turn it over now to our foundation president Douglas Walker [Applause] thank you good evening my name is Doug Walker I'm the president of the Beverly Education Foundation I would like to thank the Beverly High School and the administration team
005for all their help and allowing us to use this great facility I would also like to thank the board of the Beverly Education Foundation for all their Herculean effect efforts to make this night happen and thank you all for coming here tonight tonight's proceedings are also being live streamed on bevcam's YouTube page there are many really cool things about Beverly and one of the best can be seen right outside this building Beverly has the only continuously operating solar array set up by the Carter Administration in 1977. so Beverly was Forward Thinking when we installed them and is looking back and as we look back we recognize the importance of those panels and have just finished expanding them what a great idea thus Beverly benefited from the past and the works of the future just like
006the National Archives we can look at the documents of the past to learn and work for the future both the solar panels outside the school and the National Archives benefit everybody similarly similarly uh Beverly makes investments in our children the Beverly schools have one of the most effective one-to-one language laptop programs in the state and in 1959 Beverly made an educational investment in the incoming Freshman Class resulting in the high quality class of 1963. our return on our investment on all of these projects has been immense our speaker tonight is just one of the beneficiaries of Beverly's commitment to education and by his benefiting from The Beverly education and by this we're benefiting from the uh we have all benefited from his expertise it is my distinct pleasure to be here to introduce tonight's distinguished
007speaker to be honest I have been looking forward to this since uh the night uh in 2014 when Mr fario spoke here I know that it will be both informative and thought provoking David ferio is a graduate of the class of 1963 from Beverly High School and not this building but an older one I assume not not this one and and since then has done great things with his Beverly education David Sears served as the Director of the New York Public Library and as the university librarian and the vice Provost for Library Affairs at Duke University he recently retired as retired as the 10th archivist of the United States he was also the first librarian to hold that position which is amazing to me that it took all that time Mr fario will no doubt
008have an inside take on books access to books and the importance of the printed word as well as historical documents and have that have for all of us it is my great pleasure to introduce to you David S ferio [Applause] so David so Jay let's get started with what exactly is an archivist I'm not technically an archivist I'm a librarian so and there's a great great deal of controversy about there was a great deal of controversy when my nomination was announced among the professional Community why so he's only a librarian as one of the commentators that he's only a librarian it's a different pattern of education and it's a false dichotomy Librarians and archivists are responsible for collecting protecting and encouraging the use of fill in the blank you know whether it's primary materials or
009records or educational materials or whatever it is but the basic functions are the same the processes are a little bit different in terms of how archives are created and dependent upon robust records management programs so that there's so that the entity ends up with something to actually archive a good example of that is when I became the librarian at Duke University the archives the Duke archives reported directly to the president and she came to me this is Nan Cohan who was the president at the time she came to me and she said this doesn't make any sense the archives should report to you the archivist at that point was a Duke grad historian not trained as an archivist so it was a kind of a political situation so I said to her the only way
010you're going to you know this is going to work is if you hire a consultant so she did that she hired a consultant who delivered a report that said it should report to the librarian so she came to me and she said now will you take it and I said Not until you let me create a records Management program because Duke didn't have a records Management program really so you can't have a you know a decent archives without um Professional Care around the creation and maintenance of the records to begin with so that's what um the the subtle twist between our archivist responsibility and a librarian's responsibility okay and tell us how you became the 10th archivist of the United States it's um it's just hard to believe it was I was in retrospect now
011I had this cushy job at the New York Public Library I had an office on Fifth Avenue I had a lion outside my window a Friday afternoon um in April on a call my my assistant came into the office and said the White House is on the phone and I picked up the phone and I said yes and this 12 year old who was working on appointments for the president he was an undergraduate at Georgetown um said we're looking at you no he said first of all he said aren't you surprised to be getting a call from the White House this snotty kid uh we got beyond that and he said um I'm calling because we're looking at you for the position of archivist of the United States and this was something that was never
012on my radar screen that never occurred to me that this was something that that I would even consider and it's a presidential appointment so I was highly suspicious for me Presidential appointments are usually someone is given a lot of money to her campaign or a friend of the president or and mainly doesn't doesn't have the credentials doesn't know the business so why are they looking at someone who knows the business so this poor kid said well would you think about it over the weekend and he called back on Monday morning and we had the same conversation you know I said Kyle Watkins the kid's name is and I said I'm really flattered but you're really looking at the wrong person so 10 minutes later an adult called and and asked if he could come to
013New York and talk to me about the job so Tom wheeler who was the head of the FCC um came to New York and talk to me about what the Obama Administration was looking for in the new archivist and it all had to do with the Obama open government initiative to create a more transparent and collaborative government and they were convinced that the archives had an important role to play in that process and that's what that was the trigger for me that's what attracted me to the job that combined with the fact that it was the Obama Administration and an opportunity to give back um doing um public service at the government level was was what what really convinced me why was that so interesting for you um I knew the business I knew um
014you know how I knew how to run an archives I was responsible for archives at MIT Duke and the New York Public Library so the the technicalities of the of the job were were interesting but it was the opportunity to think at policy levels about how records can be used to be more open and transparent to let the American public have access to the records of the country in new and innovative ways so right now if people are interested in actually accessing any of the records what what's the procedure like go to archives.gov and search the catalog it's that simple yeah um it's getting better a strategic plan that that scared the um scared my staff significantly I made the statement that we were going to digitize everything everything yeah and that everything translates into
015about 14 billion pieces of paper and miles and miles of film and video and maps and all kinds of things but I'm firmly convinced that it's the only way that we're going to provide um especially kids with access to our records is to make sure that they're digitized and available 24 hours a day online and coupled with the fact that I was able to convince the president to issue a um a directive around managing government records electronically so we have shifted the federal government off of paper into electronic record keeping so that that stake in the ground around digitizing everything is everything that is sitting in files and and 42 facilities of the National Archives across the country so that's the process that's underway now wow you've met and worked with several presidents seven several
016seven seven seven presidents seven presidents eight first ladies any favorites we don't talk about favorites every one of them well almost every one of them has has some I can say something positive about one of the one of my first tasks as archivist was to take on the creation of the Bush 43 library in Dallas and that was and you know I I had an impression of that president in my head and I was not looking forward to my first meeting with him but he is the most Charming individual um outside of his office one of the nicest guys um and we had a wonderful conversation about electronic records because he'd never created any he never used email and I was I was citing the facts about how many electronic records there are from his
017administration and it came across the desk and he said and you know not one of those is mine [Laughter] and the day before I left Washington for my retirement he called to wish me good luck and suggested that I take up painting painting because he's painting he's now painting he's got um right he's doing exhibits he's got books published yes there's been much written about uh over a classification uh too much secret or restricted information who actually gets to decide that 2500 original classifiers in the executive branch there were 25 individuals who have the authority to classify that's down from when I started 9500 so there are fewer of them at work but we're still up against the fact that there are no standards for classification that what is top secret in one agency may
018be not Secret at all in another agency so there are no standards and and the process is it's much easier to just classify something than it is to go line by line and make a determination about whether it really needs to be classified so it's a huge problem there is too much classification to overclassification is a huge problem and there is a um that the reason I know so much about this is that within the National Archives is a unit called the information security oversight office which monitors classification across the executive branch and that unit has an Advisory board that has that provides a report to the president every year and for the 12 years I was there the report always recommended dealing with this lack of standardization to reduce the um the number of
019classified documents okay just to let everyone know I wanted to take a quick break and let you know that we are going to open up the floor for questions a little bit but I have a couple more prepared questions um what are the proper ways of declassifying interesting topic yeah it's I bet you never saw it coming the person has a magic wand and he can just can't just say this is Declassified that makes sense the president does have the authority to declassify but there is a process to follow um most classified content most classified records come from the intelligence community and there are multiple agencies that have equities in most of those classified records so it's the CIA and one of the branches of service military service and and perhaps the FBI all have
020equities in a single document so you can't just say it's Declassified without notifying those agencies that it's been Declassified because it's not the only copy of that classified record so it's very important that in the declassification process the originating agencies are notified and so far that has not happened that has not happened okay yes can you tell me about what important roles libraries and museums play in sustaining our democracy sure I think I've got two letters to first of all the National Archives didn't become the National Archives until the Roosevelt Franklin Roosevelt administration so records were stored in attics and basements all over town and I'm subject to fire theft and all kinds of horrible problems um the you know the British burned the town um during the War of 1812 the charters were stored
021at the state department and a clever clerk named Stephen Pleasanton who was my personal hero recognized that those Charters were at risk and he [Music] um rolled them up stuff them into linen sacks commandeered a wagon on the street and took them into the hills of Virginia and it's the only reason that the Declaration of Independence and the constitution of the Bill of Rights exist today wow Rotunda so they have been at risk the records have been at risk for from from the very beginning dragged from Philadelphia New York Washington so it's amazing what I had a responsibility for actually existed so it's not until the Roosevelt administration but as early as Thomas Jefferson there were concerns about the records and I'm going to just read a couple of letters from Jefferson that explained um
022this is Jefferson in 1789 who said where um uh wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice they may be relied on to set them to rights so from the very beginning the the thrust was to make the records available to make sure that the American people had access to the records so that they could correct problems that they saw coming so that was 1789 and then in 1791 another letter from Jefferson where he says time and accident are committing daily havoc on the originals deposited in our public offices the late War has done the work of centuries in this business the Lost cannot be recovered but let us save what Remains Not by vaults and locks
023which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time but by such a multiplication of copies as shall place them beyond the reach of accident multiplication nation of copies he is the grandfather of my digitization project this multiplication of projects and then FDR was who I'm convinced was a clause that archivist himself when he was dedicating his Presidential Library in Hyde Park in 1941 said he likened the dedication of her library to an Act of Faith to bring together the records of the past and to house them in buildings where they will be preserved for the use of men and women in the future a nation must believe in three things it must be leaving the past it must believe in the future it must above all believe
024in the capacity of its own people so to learn from the past that they can gain in judgment in creating their own future so from the very beginning the thrust has been make those records available so that American people can hold their government accountable and learn from the past and that was that's what drove me for you know my entire time at the National Archives making it easy for people to do that wow I'm just taking that in for a moment that's amazing uh can you tell me about your time in Beverly Public School System how has the education that you gained led to you to to where you are now I had a great I had a great experience I loved school from you know from Mrs Robinson's first grade class where I was
025in the bluebird reading section can you believe that they could never get away with that now with it I think there were starlings and the lowest group you know they were classified as a bird based on your reading ability so um but I I was a good student and I loved I loved um my time in you know Elementary School Grace Dowling in the third grade who's who's aunt Minnie Greenleaf lived around the corner so there were all these personal Collections and she hit a coat room full of rubber stamps that she stamped you know when you did a good job on your on your papers and I got to um fill the inkwells for our penmanship class with our traveling um Miss Adams was the traveling penmanship teacher she was about 300 years old
026when when and in fact it was so bad that she was my father's penmanship teacher and she's the one who broke my father of using his left hand and and but by the time I got there I'm also left-handed as she had gotten over that so we had you know a circuit penmanship teacher a circuit art teacher Mrs fish who taught me about Rosa burn here and her love of horses I just I was a good student and loved and thought thought I was going to be a teacher that's where that's where I was headed yeah okay my favorite class was Senior English with Emery hollerer who was um who I thought was ancient but it turns out that that's like his first job out of college he was only a couple of a couple
027of years older than we were but he he made that class so much fun um that it was not it wasn't a chore you know and he's instilled in me um a habit of reading 50 pages a night I have to I have to read 50 pages and that comes from the training that Emory Oliver so I try to always do that but it's um I can't say enough good about the education I got Beverly Public Schools what do you think is the single most important thing that you learned um single most important thing um it's that it's the the importance of education and that it's um it's the road to success and it's it's just how important it is in a personal life jumping back to the archives uh can you tell me about
028the kinds of records that were in your custody sure um everything from every every possible format you can think of parchment paper vellum um film discs we conservation preservation is a huge part of of the the work of the National Archives we have trained scientists chemists physicists who are daily testing materials for deterioration the as you might expect the charters or of the highest concern to ensure that those are cared for special um especially so that the temperature environmental conditions are are appropriate for for the um the Declaration of Independence for instance so just about every format you can think of and when you get into the business of electronic records we've identified over 500 about 575 file formats for for digital records which is an amazing challenge to ensure that those records can be
029migrated over time and content of them read this is an international effort to ensure that electronic records are surviving huge challenge wow before we open up questions to everyone here a couple were submitted from a classmate Brenda Harding have you ever been nervous about meeting someone or doing an event with them God bless Brenda Harding where are you sure where are you oh hello Brenda is an old friend and I saw that that question in advance and it made me think of I've I've had the opportunity to meet lots of lots of folks um and there are two two situations where I was just stunned in awe and Starstruck I guess one was when I was at the New York Public Library meeting with Lauren Bacall we were after her for her papers for the
030library of the Performing Arts and they went to her apartment in the Dakota to talk to her and I was just like oh my God Lauren because what am I doing here with Lauren she was she was perfectly charming and I was just tongue-tied and uh and I can remember as I was leaving uh gorgeous apartment as I was living there was this huge chest by the by the door and she said and that's bogey so she had his stuff too she didn't um she did not give her stuff to the New York Public Library she had kids and they sold the papers I think somewhere so the second one was um I was invited to a dinner at the Supreme Court for a retiring Justice this District Court D.C District Court judge and I
031was seated next to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and that was my first encounter with Ruth Bader ginsenberg and she had on these wonderful white laced gloves and then she was totally charming and I was it was the same thing like oh my God but that was the first of three meetings with Ruth Theta Ginsburg the next two were in my office she came to do a we did did two naturalization ceremonies a year one on Constitution Day and one on Bill of Rights day and she was the guest speaker at one of those and then she came to do um a private tour of our 19th Amendment exhibit um and it was it was a completely different situation in in both of those it was much more relaxed and comfortable and totally Charming individual um and
032sharp as attack she went through that exhibit and she could talk cogently about every record that was in that exhibit and she was just wonderful and in fact one of the um one of the administrative duties of the national of the archivist is managing the administrative process for amending the Constitution and and as you might remember the era is still up in the air about passage and I was under great pressure to pass it to you know ratify it um the timetable has shifted expired twice it has been rescinded by Six States um and the advice from Council was don't touch it right now and I had conversations with Ruth Bader genser twice who was surprised that I was getting such such blowback about this and she said you know we need to start over
033she said that to me twice we need to start over so thank you for sharing can you offer any Clarity to the ongoing Beverly Marblehead controversy surrounding the birthplace of the U.S Navy this is from Richard Pescatore a Beverly birthplace fan Richard are you here there is thank you for the question so there are actually five places who claim to be the birthplace of the American Navy when I was when I left here to go to join the Navy the sign at the Beverly Salem Bridge was welcome to barely the birthplace of the American Navy and when I came back from the Navy Marblehead had scooped up the title so I don't have no idea how that happened or why that happened but I wasn't happy happy to see that so the five places who
034claim to be yeah here it is okay Philadelphia um George Washington signed the law that created the um the Navy the Continental Navy in October of 1775 so they claimed to be the birthplace Whitehall New York um Benedict Arnold led a naval action on Lake Champlain Whitehall claims to be the birthplace of the Navy um Machias Maine in June of 1775 the British Navy Schooner was seized off of Machias Maine so they claimed to be the birthplace Providence Rhode Island claims to be the birthplace because the first call for the establishment of the Navy was made in Providence Rhode Island and then of course there's um so it's six places then it's the Beverly and Marblehead um fight over whose who's got it um so it's all it's all about the ship Hannah which was
035outfitted George Washington ordered the outfitting of Hannah which was in Beverly Harbor the crew was the Marblehead regiment but the if you look at the composition of the Marblehead regiment there were many Beverly residents who were part of that regiment so it was a mixed crew it sailed out of Beverly Harbor didn't Sail Out of Marblehead Harbor [Laughter] [Applause] so um when I was when I was the archivist when I met with the directors of the presidential libraries for the first time they went around the room and introduced themselves and the director of the candidate handed me a copy of a letter that a kid wrote to um to President Kennedy asking for information about the proposed Peace Corps it's a letter for me then two weeks later the Eisenhower called to tell me they
036had found two letters for me to prison Eisenhower and then when I was at the LBJ they handed me a copy of the letter I wrote to LBJ congratulating him for signing the Civil Rights Act so my staff was so sick of hearing about these letters that one day one day the staffer came running in with a letter from Taft to me claiming that verifying my claim that Beverly was the birthplace of the American Navy that's great so as far as I'm concerned it's still up in the air and you can have whatever plaques you're gonna get made that say it's the birthplace of the American Navy and that's what they have over there in Marblehead plaques we got a couple of Marblehead Ringers in the audience so uh uh Doug Walker wants to know
037what impacts do you think AI will have on the National Archives it's something that I'm really interested in and curious about because when I was at MIT in the libraries at MIT where artificial intelligence was almost born it was really a conference in Dartmouth but the other artificial intelligence lab adopted the library as kind of a test bit so there was a lot of interesting machine learning activities that the the AI lab was was doing so I've always been interested in the machine learning aspect of things there's some very creative work done at the the Virginia Tech University of etu um in that area of facial recognition lots of Civil War photos for instance of soldiers who have been identified through loading lots of lots of recognized photos with names and and that kind of
038stuff we had an active partnership with vtu around testing several machine learning aspects of ways of Inc enhancing increasing the processing of Records by loading as much of the content as we have made available and then loading new records in and seeing what kind of matches come up to see if if we can describe records in a more efficient way but I'm really concerned about the misuse of some of this these records and how we protect to ensure that that those aren't being altered right and which is you know a huge concern in some of the the AI applications that are um being bandied about today uh uh also from Doug a burning question Donald Trump famous we rip up we flush down the toilet but we don't burn that's the question Donald Trump famously
039flushed documents and clogged the White House Plumbing what heroic actions are the archivists taking to piece these items back together so um I don't know if you notice but if you Google Trump White House toilets you will find several references that he made during speeches all of a sudden in a rant he started ranting about the quality of the toilets in the White House and it's because he was unable to flush those records um that's what stopped up the um stopped up the um the toilets oh my goodness and I never got I had a cunning idea to get my hands on the plumbing records of the White House to see if I could correlate the but I never we never got around that so they were issues around you know tearing up and some
040of the records that we did get delivered to us at the change of the administration were bags baggies of torn up records um and [Music] um so and then there was um talking about burning someone on my staff reported that they saw smoke coming out of the chimney at the White House and they're convinced that there were there was actually burning of Records but there's no there's no documentation there so the the records in the White House and the records in the every executive branch agency are controlled by monitored by a records management unit within the the agency who reports to up through their own agency we have at the National Archives we have authority over the Executive Branch agencies in terms of the federal records act so we have the ability to investigate and
041and guide and provide correction if if things are going wrong but on the presidential records side we have the opportunity to provide guidance but we don't have authority to tell them what to do the only only areas where we have authority are suspected removal or destruction of records and so that's where we were able to make some inroads so the the there is within the White House the White House Office of Records management the worm which is responsible for the records of the of the White House and it's a unit that as I said doesn't report to me but reports up to the um through the secretary at the White House and we have a very close working relationship with the with that group and they were beat up basically for four years of that
042Administration in terms of trying to get the processes you know followed and all that kind of stuff so it really felt badly for them and invited them before I left to come for a tour of the National Archives and gave them each a copy of there's a wonderful novel that was written by a friend of mine called Rachel to the rescue Eleanor lippman has written a novel about Rachel as a young intern who's hired to tape together torn up records in the in the White House so I gave each member of the worm a copy of that book and I gave the director of the of the worm Phil um a plunger with his name on it uh so appropriate um insurrection what would have happened if it were successful what agencies or departments would
043have stepped in can you talk a little bit more about that yeah it was um so another administrative role of the National Archives is to administer the whole electoral college process so the archivist establishes the date of the Electoral College meetings sends a letter to the secretaries of State outlining what the rules are the secretaries of State have to deliver to the the archivist a certificate of assertation which is the list of official electors that's the first thing document that needs to be sent to the archivist and it has to be certified with seals and all kinds of stuff and then when the electors meet on that day the result of those meetings are forwarded to the archivist as well and then my staff compares the votes with the original set of electors to make
044sure that there's no funny business going on so in this particular case there was funny business going on because there were seven bogus lists of electors that were submitted by seven different states so at that point Department of Justice gets involved in you know and we make sure that that only the official electors votes are counted so that whole process and what happens on the hill when that's certified is Meaningful to us and to me and I was in my office that day watching on television as for that ceremony take place but also watching this angry mob coming up Pennsylvania Avenue by my window under my window um screaming you know stop the stop the steal and brandishing all kinds of flags and Banners and sticks and it was scary as hell it was the
045scariest moment of my career in Washington because it occurred to me if these morons realize what's in this building what's to stop them from you know coming attacking you know this building and damage trying to damage the charter so I backed away from the window um it was the I was alone in the building with security people it was just me and the security folks the building was sealed so that didn't happen but that was that was my concern um so so you should know the question is really about if they had if the mob had destroyed the certificates and they couldn't and they couldn't do the work that they needed to do that was only one set there are multiple sets of those certificates and the votes in the National Archives saves one of
046them one of those sets so there's backup okay so so that that was not at risk even though there was a lot of stuff in the Press about how we came so close to losing everything and right but we do we have backup okay and it's like it's actually back up online also because as those certificates are are received they're scanned and put onto our website so I think this might be a good moment to open up if anyone has a question for David uh we would love to hear your question here I'll come down with the microphone I actually was just hoping you could get back to the question that you asked and then I think there kind of went in another Direction about the importance of libraries and museums in our current um
047state or whatever thank you what's the question uh explain the importance of libraries and museums in our society I thought I covered that in terms of access to the records um everything that that I have been doing in my career is figuring out ways to improve access to information whether it's a college student or using doing research or for the American public in terms of access to our our records um so that they can hold the government accountable that's you know that's the basis of our democracy we have another one over here hi I I work with you at MIT in the early 90s um the difference between you were saying that because those uh electoral votes were digitized immediately we had copies but you also talked earlier about the risk of alteration of digital
048copies what's the balance how should we maintain original versus hard copy versus digital there is no um we're now in a situation where there is no paper copy it's digital only for um all of the 21 275 agencies of the executive branch so it's the the potential of altering a digital record that that's used to keep me up at night not anymore someone else is worried now the importance of backup we were heavy users of the federal Cloud to ensure that there's a secure place where those records can be kept but it's it's a you know cyber security is a huge issue is it a greater risk than paper definitely yeah but we're not going back yeah we've had we've had situations where you know paper was changed a um noted historian changed a Lincoln
049paper document to change and change the date on it to make it look like it was the last thing that he signed before he was assassinated I'm wondering if you had top secret clearance and if there was any documents that you examined that were revealed surprises that maybe the general public doesn't know in the United States yes but I can't talk about it [Laughter] cemeteries throughout the country are full of deteriorating archival records called tombstones so any hope for restoring and preserving those those records are we are you talking about a specific collection site well everywhere like Central Cemetery in Beverly the Tombstones are deteriorating you can't read many of them yeah I'd love to see them when I was a Simmons student I had did some volunteer work with um Mimi Bachelor some of
050you might remember me Bachelor um looking at the records in the basement of the city hall and we I saw firsthand what you're talking about in terms of deterioration it's um preservation is not an easy sell for funders it's not the first thing people worry about um and it's you know the the federal government has several different um Grant making opportunities for people to to get started but in terms of long-term maintenance it's the responsibility of the The Entity to ensure that there's that material is is available long-term hey when I graduated from college my first job is working for LCBO of space which was the Prime contract of the NASA over at Kendall Square oh yeah the electronic Research Center yeah and we worked on the project uh at the time we called it
051the electronic library where we had facilities all over the country St Louis had everything and anything you want to know about safety in California the Palo Alto was the jet proposed now one of the things Harvard University allegedly was trying to digitize their entire collection was there any collaboration between New York Department and Harvard on this massive task of trying to digitize what year are we talking about when was when was this uh on the I I think the Harvard stuff I I think it was about five or six years ago maybe 10 years ago no not that I'm aware of okay no yeah well they have this massive program where they're every I think the the main library is what Weiner or wiener Weidner who weiner yeah and the the that was the first
052uh place that they wanted to digitize and then they were gonna I from what they say was an ambitious program yeah that's that's interesting I don't I don't know anything about that but I would like to know more about it we were um at the when I was at the New York public we were part of the Google Book Project and we did massive amounts of digitization of out of copyright material from the New York Public Library in a Consortium of about a dozen different libraries around the country who were creating content for for Google books hi Beverly has a public library it does yes on on Essex Street and in the Farms even at bookmobile so I wondered when you were growing up in Beverly did you use those libraries I did in fact
053I used a little-known branch of the Beverly Public Library in North Beverly in the Conti flower shop the Conte's dedicated one shelving section four books that were delivered from the main library and the bottom shelf was kids books and I can still remember it was within walking distance from where I grew up and I can still remember sitting on the floor of Conti's florist shop surrounded by tubs of flowers and stuff picking books to read that was my first that was my beginning in libraries and Mrs Conte up until about five or six years ago was still alive living in Florida and she read an article about me in the Salem News when I was appointed and sent me a letter because I had talked about the Conti's flower shop that was so nice and
054then when I was you know could um actually go to the the main library I fell in love with will Barnett in these paintings in the in the library in the main library they're still there The Wilbur Nets and one of my best friends is Chris Loring who's one of the famous luring family who have supported the Beverly Public Library forever and he's a librarian what was the librarian at Smith College foreign honored to have you here tonight um my question I have a 19 year old son and you know my biggest I guess uh concern today is is we've touched on a little bit misinformation yeah and I think of um the role of an archivist uh to to be that of preserving history uh for what reason to to bring a better future
055um and it's disturbing to see how he is influenced you know they say that the newspaper is kind of the rough draft of history and I guess you could apply that to you know all of the um you know gigabytes of data that that transpire every day right as that turns into an archive um how how do we use that as a tool and and you mentioned you know digital digitization as being kind of the the you know your passion and and um making it accessible how do we make it accessible to the younger generation that isn't inclined to read the newspaper that has journalistic Integrity where you know sources have been so that's part of um uh when you're in answer to your question about the role of the libraries and democracy point one
056of the values that I developed in my Beverly Public Schools education was critical thinking the ability to recognize where the content came from how trusted is it can I believe what who wrote this you know what are the credentials all that kind of stuff in in going out of my way to read stuff that I wouldn't ordinarily read so I get a you know a picture a whole picture of of um around the around the issue um and and and the Pew Foundation has does a series of studies about American life and um measures uh American Trust of various institutions and the consistently public libraries um appear at the top of the list of the most trusted entities in communities and that they um must be doing something right in terms of providing well-rounded collections
057as well as services that address this critical thinking issue I think and it's not it's not easy I can tell you um I there's um this is a gross generalization but Librarians are pretty liberal individuals and I can still remember when I was at Duke University and it was the rise of the conservative presses in the publishing business and my bibliographer's resisting collecting conservative literature there's a you know a bias that um needs to be recognized and conquered in order to present the whole smear for students to make those critical choices yeah David if all of the documents artifacts of all of the wonderful things that you've witnessed and had been in the presence of which ones were the ones that really just just impressed you and here it is you know is this document
058or is it here's this Society you know it varied we I'm sure we did a lot of VIP tours in in the vault the high-end kinds of stuff and we always went out of our way to tailor it to the individual so and I tried to go into as many of these as as possible and I think to answer your question I think the most disturbing and valuable um collection are the 375 treaties with Native Americans that were signed where we promised so much land um hospitals schools and never delivered on any of them we have um a private donor who gave us the money to digitize all those records so all those treaties are now online on the on our website and we're regularly visited by tribal elders and tribal lawyers who are still
059using those treaties to convince the federal government to deliver on some of the promises that were made so that's um you know one of the the areas that I would point to but as I said we tailored our vault visits to the individuals and we had the new commandanto of the Coast Guard with us for a visit and I remembered this situation growing up in Beverly about this legend about this capsizing a boat of a boat off of Mingo Beach and General Patton young major Patton in a boat with his wife saving these kids and I um I asked my staff can you find and I found the they found the records and we were able to share those with with the in in the the letter written by Mrs Patton I guess I don't
060think they were married at the time I think that she was they were dating but she was on the boat and she wrote this four or five Page Letter describing the event saving these kids these kids were weren't about that capsized they were passed by by several other boats they weren't they weren't saved until the patents pulled them on board and described how low in the water they were sailing to get them back to shore that was a very special moment for me because I remembered that story and and didn't know that it was actually documentation to to prove it you mentioned um access and you also mentioned nationalarchives.gov yep have you noticed an increase in hits to the National to that website over the last couple years is it decreasing is it staying the
061same are people using the media to find out information yeah is a steady increase but I'm more I'm more interested in my my approach to things is it's fine to to point to archives.gov as a place to find information but it's more important for us to understand where people are going now to find information and get our stuff linked there so Wikipedia is a primary example all of our collections are linked to entries in Wikipedia and we've got something like three billion hits a year on our content in Wikipedia for instance um Flickr for photos um so wherever you know wherever people are going to find information themselves we try and Link the um the Wikipedia thing is is still controversial some people think it's not a trusted Source I disagree completely it is the
062people's encyclopedia and the editing process weeds out incorrect information I learned this at when I was at the New York Public Library I encourage my bibliographers when they're processing a collection to make a link in Wikipedia in that page so that people get driven into the New York Public Library through Wikipedia a staff member in the library for the Performing Arts that just finished processing The Paddy chesky collection and went into make the link and she discovered all these errors in the page and she she had editorial chops and went in and changed made the corrections and within half an hour she had a flaming email from a faculty member at Northwestern University who had created the page how dare you um and she flamed right back saying you know I've got the records you
063know I have the documentation so it's a self-policing kind of thing um this is a multi-part question so knowing that you were the former archivist of the United States made me wonder if closer okay made me wonder about archivists in other countries and if you had any connection or correspondence with them and how they might do things differently and the second part of the question is that while there is a lot of history in this country it is still a relatively new country and how archival um different differences in archival techniques between older and younger countries if you were aware of such a different search Extinction there is a a really good group called The International Council of archivists and it's the um the the national archivists from around the world who get together every
064two years to compare notes we have at the National Archives had the closest working relationships with the archives of the UK Australia and Canada similar issues in terms of electronic records great variety as you might expect in third world countries in terms of just getting support for paper record keeping and Records management in general so it's um it's a it's a really mixed bag and it follows just the the economic situation in each of the countries but we have um as I said before this this business with the file formats for electronic records most of the work that's being done to address that is through this Consortium of the English-speaking archives um so you talked a lot about libraries and books and all that I recently read an article that 85 percent of gen Z
065get their information and this was specifically to the financial world financial information from Financial influencers which to me is a very frightening thought process right so how are we addressing that um you know if if the students today and I don't have one but um are using social media and not really using books going to libraries like I grew up doing how do we preserve some of the stuff that you've worked so hard to keep and to preserve and archive any thoughts education education education you know there's a wonderful book called the filter bubble I forget Ari something or other um which spells out exactly what this issue is where people are getting their information from one source and not exposed to you know other sources recognizing that in educational programs in schools and and
066teaching people that they need to you know how to do basic research is is multiple sources of information and comparing multiple sources of information um I I you know it's a huge problem so David tell me how do you feel about the future going forward are you hopeful leave us on a good note here of course I'm hopeful of course I'm hopeful um we are at a very serious time in our history I think we have lots of forces working for us and against us it's very important in these times for people to not sit back and wring their hands but to get involved to to act there's a wonderful book called the bill of obligations by Richard Haas h-a-a-s-s that's a take on the Bill of Rights and translates each one of those rights
067into an obligation one of the most moving events at the National Archives are those naturalization ceremonies that we do we're a hundred new new citizens are sworn in in front of the charters and in those each one of those ceremonies there's an outside speaker who has gone through the process Ruth Gator bins Gator brinsenberg and Jose Andres and Elaine Chao and a long list of of um of Madeleine Albright people who have gone through the process and talked about not only the rights that people have but the obligations and I think that's that gets lost we're so focused on our rights and not on our obligations that we need to pay attention to that get involved call call out things that you that are that are wrong that you see that are wrong and get
068involved this is so fascinating thank you so much David thank you both so much and thank you all for coming this evening we have a lot of gratitude many things and first of all all of the um the Dr trochick superintendent of public schools uh thank you as well as the leadership of Beverly High School principal Mark Thomas Phil cordere Paul Casey curriculum director for the Humanities Judy Miller or is she not here now Barb facto as well as all of the all of the students who help participate today Bev cam tremendous thank you so much for your help and Chris Harvey and the text that makes sure that we were up and running tonight um as we leave and as David and Jay have kind of shown us tonight um we have to support
069our public institutions support um um those those things that really make our community what it is and makes our country what it is um and one of the things that we have to support is education so I ask you to support the Beverly Education Foundation remember our great nation is built upon an informed citizenry and um and that's to help us determine those issues and what we're going to do with those issues and how we Face them so advocate for Education support it fund it and get involved in it and again thank you so much for all of the questions all of the support and for your time and and and wisdom both of you thank you good evening can I just do um I just didn't need to do one shout out to someone
070who couldn't be here tonight who's watching in the live stream um the oldest living Pharaoh who's 95 years old my uncle Feeney um who would be sitting right over there with his wife and daughter is watching online and he is he literally is the oldest living Pharaoh because we're the only ones who pronounce it incorrectly [Laughter] so Feeney thanks thank you