This is a hugely important FOIA request. It's truly outrageous that vast quantities of public records are only digitally available through for-profit subscription services when they should be freely available through the National Archives. Good luck, RtR. https://twitter.com/ReclaimTheRecs/status/1316440944720273409

Yes, you can go to the National Archives to view these records on microfilm (except, actually, right now, you can't because they're closed for covid). But as someone who's spent months sifting through microfilm reels, it is no replacement for the power of full-text searches.

I'm 99% sure that @USNatArchives doesn't like this situation. But they are vastly underfunded, under-staffed, and under-resourced. That's on Congress and every member who purports to revere the Constitution but neglects the institution that cares for the actual document.

I frankly find it deeply disappointing that Congress didn't fund @USNatArchives to digitize its many hundreds of microfilm series itself (imagine a huge room with wall-to-ceiling microfilm drawers). This is a public service. The records belong to us and are not corporate property

Here's a list of what mostly Ancestry has digitized: https://www.archives.gov/digitization/digitized-by-partners

You'll see the bulk of these series are subjects useful for genealogical research, which, great! These are useful to both professional historians as well as ordinary citizens who want to learn more about what their government can tell them about their own families.

These have been digitized because those are series of value to what Ancestry sells.

But there are so many other series that are of far greater historical value that have not been digitized and should be.

There are vast microfilm collections from across NARA record groups–from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the Army and Navy to the General Land Office. You can see the collections, and which have or haven't been digitized here: https://eservices.archives.gov/orderonline/start.swe?SWECmd=GotoView&SWEBHWND=&_sn=hWA.CQw5zoW8MoSyG5bccRlp5ufmM1JXMRNb8pxLeJymmKKuUkP57Msc2VOARh7gatOlcyT7yOyT65xgTrMUNB-UKzPmWCrVZ9W0Flpd4IIKGDU58.clW3bGcGFzJkq4HreCEEi1ek7E.TvEGjNg-dqSfEi-T9.7P6LZYbQgUwxPyQWJv6cjZNuZR9mC4iGOoxeWUquaoj8_&SWEView=GPEA+Microfilm+Landing+Page+View+MIF&SRN=&SWEHo=eservices.archives.gov&SWETS=1602700819&SWEScreen=GPEA+Microfilm+MIF

This should have been a Congressional priority. Hopefully, come next year, it will be.

Gah just scrolling through this list makes me depressed. Imagine if these collections were digitized.

Ancestry has no incentive to digitize "Letters Received by the Attorney General, 1809-1870: Federal Government Correspondence" BUT THAT SURE SOUNDS LIKE AN IMPORTANT SET OF DOCUMENTS TO MAKE EASILY AVAILABLE.

Who would want to be able to examine 28 reels of "The Richard M. Nixon National Security Files, 1969-1974, Middle East Negotiations"?

40 reels of "Confidential U.S. State Department Central Files, Congo: 1960-January 1963, Internal and Foreign Affairs."

Historians use these. But it takes years for a handful of people to properly sift through them, and frankly, many probably haven't been well studied at all.

I wonder if there's anything of interest in 70 reels of "Records of the Michigan Superintendency of Indian Affairs, 1814-1851."

Ancestry doesn't care about this. But *you* should.

The 21 reels of "Final Reports of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, 1945-1947" should be digitally available. This is seriously important stuff (Robert McNamara worked on this!)

There are 955 reels of "Investigative Case Files of the Bureau of Investigation, 1908-1922."

Imagine being able to sift through that with keyword searches.

Did I mention this should all be an automated process?

There are microfilm digitization machines. @USNatArchives should be funded to buy a ton of them and do this all in-house.

And fwiw, there are still vast quantities of historical records @USNatArchives that aren't microfilmed and will keep scholars going there forever.

But there's no excuse for this country not digitizing the stuff that's already been microfilmed.

I will lose the rest of my day if I keep looking through the list of microfilmed collections.

This stuff should all be digitized and freely available. The end.