1. Two years ago, when we published our story on how ISIS governs, we made a promise to readers: We would find a way to make the more than 15,000 pages of internal ISIS records we found available to the general public. Today we made good on that promise: https://isisfiles.gwu.edu 

2. Over five different trips to Iraq, my team collected 1000s of pages of ISIS records on embeds with the Iraqi military. With the permission of the officers, we brought them back to NY to write about them. But only a fraction of them appeared in my story: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/04/world/middleeast/isis-documents-mosul-iraq.html

3. We knew the trove we had collected was historic and needed to be shared more widely than just our own newsroom. Finding the documents took months on the ground. It involved @nytimes reporters taking considerable risk, including searching buildings that had not been demined.

4. I was able to do that because of the significant investment that the @nytimes put into my project & through the support of my editor @meslackman. Once we'd finished our reporting, the question that preoccupied us was how do we responsibly make this trove available to others?

5. It was clear @nytimes could not do this on its own. We are a news organization, not an archive. So we began looking for academic partners. Early on, @gwupoe & @librarygelman stood out, both because of their subject matter expertise & their dedication to this particular project

6. The originals were returned to the Iraqi Embassy after they were digitized. The archive at @gwupoe & @gelmanlibrary is online-only. @gwupoe has drafted a partnership with Mosul University. But because the archive is online, anyone can access it here: https://isisfiles.gwu.edu 

7. I'd like to end with a call-out to fellow journalists: When you find records during embeds & are able to collect them with the permission of local authorities, pls consider sharing them with the archive at @gwupoe after you finish your article so that others can also benefit.

8. None of this would have been possible without my Iraqi colleagues: The great @abumalic1963, my brother & the force behind my reporting & the essential "Hawk" the alias of our Mosul-based translator, who was at my side in the buildings we entered. With all my heart, thank you.