The following was taken from this week's edition of Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter. Subscription information is posted at the bottom of this message. - National Archives' Electronic Access Project The following is an extract from an announcement by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration: The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is making it easier than ever for people to find and use documents from its collections. Through the Electronic Access Project (EAP), funded through the support of Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, anyone, anywhere, with a computer connected to the Internet can search descriptions of NARA's nationwide holdings and view digital copies of some its most popular documents. In the Strategic Plan, NARA outlined the agency's electronic access strategy: We will continue our construction of a nationwide, integrated online information delivery system that educates citizens about NARA and its facilities, services, and holdings: makes available digital copies of high-interest documents; and contains an online ordering capability. We will build a practical, affordable automated system for tracking and using records throughout their life cycle. The Electronic Access Project is laying the groundwork for the future development of a life-cycle system. The project, still in the developmental phase, will eventually result in a virtual card catalog of all NARA holdings nationwide, including those in the Presidential libraries and regional archives. In addition, copies of NARA's most popular and significant manuscripts, photographs, sound recordings, maps, drawings and other documents will be digitized and available for researchers to view online. Users will be able to search the descriptions in the system by title, subject, date, or other keywords. Throughout development of the virtual card catalog, NARA will be upgrading our public access Internet capabilities. Until the development of the catalog is completed, NARA will continue to provide access to the prototype system, the NARA Archival Information Locator. NAIL is an online searchable database that contains information about a wide variety of NARA's holdings across the country. Although the locator contains more than 250,000 descriptions and 3500 digital documents, it represents only a limited portion of NARA's vast holdings. Until the catalog is completed, NARA will continue to add descriptions and digital documents to the prototype. For more information, look at: http://www.nara.gov/nara/vision/eapover.html ===================================== COPYRIGHTS: The information contained herein is copyright 1997 by Ancestry, Inc. and by Richard W. Eastman except for information attributed to other sources within the text. This newsletter is for the personal use of the individuals on the mailing list. ========================================================== Subscription information: To subscribe to this free newsletter, send an e-mail message to the following address: subscribe@rootscomputing.com