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>> I'm David Ferriero, the archivist
of the United States here at Dartmouth, to speak to the staff
and friends of the libraries about the National Archives,
where I have been the archivist --
tenth archivist of the United States since November of 2009.
Let me tell you a little bit about the archives.
We are the record keeper of the government.
All of the records created by the 275 agencies
and the White House and Congress and the Supreme Court are housed
at the National Archives.
Forty-four facilities around the country, a collection
of about 12 billion pages at the moment.
More and more are being created electronically,
so we're shifting from paper to electronic communication,
especially social media..
a lot of use of Twitter and Facebook and all kinds of new
and emerging technologies that make it a challenge
to capture the records of the government.
So the United States got a late start in creating the archives.
It didn't happen until the Franklin
Roosevelt Administration.
The doors of the archives in Washington opened in 1935,
so it's amazing that we have what we have from pre-1935.
The records were stored all over DC in basements and attics
and garages, subject to theft and fire and flood
and all kinds of horrible things.
But the records start with the Journals
of the Continental Congress and go up through the tweets
that are being created in the White House today.
Those are the records of the government
and that's what we're responsible for.
So let me tell you a couple of my favorite records.
The Charters of Freedom, of course: The Declaration
of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill
of Rights are housed in the main building
as 700 Pennsylvania Avenue.
So it's amazing that they're --
that the Charters of Freedom actually survived
because the night before the British burned the town,
Dolly Madison reminded her husband
that it would be important to remove those documents,
and they were rolled up and spirited into the mountains
of Virginia just to protect them.
So my personal favorites are a wonderful letter
from Annie Oakley to President William McKinley offering
to raise a sharp -- a troop of 50 sharpshooter women
who would supply their own rifles and ammunition
to fight the Spanish-American war; a wonderful letter
from a ten-year-old boy in Cuba -- in Havana, Cuba,
to FDR asking for a ten dollar bill.
He'd never seen an American green ten dollar bill.
And if FDR would send him a ten dollar bill, he would show him
where the ore deposits are in Cuba
so he could build his ships.
It's a letter from Fidel Castro; wonderful letter
that Walt Whitman -- during the Civil War Walt Whitman work
in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and when I became archivist
and discovered that I have responsibility
for civilian personnel records, anyone who ever worked
in the government, I asked
to see Walt Whitman's personnel record,
and in it is a four-page letter -- reference letter --
he was applying for another job in government --
written by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
So the records of the country are amazing, extensive,
and entertaining and surprising.