US National Archives (NARA) Joins YouTube, US Army allows access to social media

After visiting the US National Archives in Washington D.C. last week, I found myself inspired. It is the only archive I have ever been anywhere in the world that had a line of people outside waiting to get in. Almost all of these people were interested in seeing a select few extremely well guarded documents; the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and some other related materials. Though I didn’t get a chance to go inside, I also noted that the Archives had a shop with plenty of books on American history and reproductions of documents. The good news just keeps coming though. A few days ago, the US Archives started a YouTube channel (here is the Archives press release about it).  There are 21 videos there now, mostly focused on US Presidents (hmm, maybe Library and Archives Canada could do something like this for all Canadian Prime Ministers?). The channel looks well designed and I hope it expands.

I also learned this week, via Stephen Abram, that the United States Army is now allowing its soldiers to access social media websites like flickr, Twitter and Facebook. You can read about it on this WIRED article. This new openness does not apply to American bases oversees. The powers that be are viewing social media as a tool. The order authorizing this change states, “IOT support the intent of senior Army leaders to leverage social media as a medium to allow soldiers to “tell the Army story” and to facilitate the dissemination of strategic, unclassified information.” While promising, this statement partly misses the point. Social media is a two way road and trying to use it like broadcast media will not be all that successful. Still, it is early days and maybe they will come around. I wonder if this originated as an order from the Commander-in-Chief who is well known for his embrace of social media tools. After all, the new White House website is a fine piece of work. I wonder what their usage statistics are like?

Related posts:

1. York University Adopts Open Access Policy for Librarians and Archivists
2. The High Social Cost of Poor Records