The NPSAB consulted with National Park Service employees and more than 100 outside subject matter experts, including scholarly and professional organizations, and private sector representatives. Their report focuses on 10 separate tasks designed to:

• Plan for a future National Park System.
• Recommend national historic landmarks that represent a broader, richer representation of America’s story.
• Propose national natural landmarks that increase awareness of America’s diverse natural history and explore new opportunities for public and private support.
• Support the economic valuation of National Park Service parks and programs, including cooperative programs outside the National Park System.
• Revisit the “Leopold Report,” a 1963 report that influenced the philosophy, policies and people of the National Park Service, and prepare a contemporary version to help the National Park Service confront modern challenges in resource management.
• Expand collaboration in education to broaden contacts with educational institutions and incorporate National Park Service parks and programs into educational media.
• Explore American Latino Heritage by developing a theme study to identify American Latino related places for inclusion in new national historic landmarks and national parks, as well as existing National Park Service sites.
• Support the National Park Service centennial by providing advice for a centennial public awareness initiative.
• Build community relationships to explore new approaches for broader relevancy and public engagement.
  Support leadership development by providing advice on National Park Service leadership, workforce, organizational development, and more effectively advancing innovation.

Established under the Historic Sites Act of 1935, the NPSAB is a congressionally chartered body of 12 private citizens appointed by the Secretary of the Interior that provides advice to the Secretary of the Interior and to the Director of the National Park Service on matters relating to operation of the parks and management of the NPS. A primary purpose of the NPSAB is to provide independent perspectives on current issues and to identify long-range opportunities and possible solutions to System-wide challenges. Its 2001 report, Rethinking the National Parks for the 21st Century, recommended a 25-year vision for the NPS; today’s report builds on that work.

The report is available online at www.nps.gov/resources/advisoryboardreport.htm.

Major exceptions are the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). President Obama has requested FY 2014 funding of $154.2 million for the NEH, an $8.2 million increase from the FY ’13 level of $146 million. The NHPRC would see its budget cut by $2 million from the FY ’13 level of $5 million to $3 million in the President’s proposal.

As in year’s past, Republican leaders in Congress declared the President’s budget “dead on arrival.” As we all know Congress can barely pass continuing resolutions to keep the government operating, often from week-to-week, let alone pass all its appropriations bills in a given fiscal year. Nonetheless, the President’s budget is relevant for some of the smaller agencies and programs that affect our stakeholders since it often sets benchmarks that provide the starting point for negotiations.

Below are highlights of the President’s proposed FY ’14 budget for key federal agencies and programs. The FY ‘13 budget numbers are provided for comparison. It should be noted that the President’s proposed budget was submitted to Congress over two months past the early-February deadline. On March 1, 2013, the sequester imposed a 5% across-the-board cut to non-exempt non-defense discretionary funding. The President’s budget includes the FY’13 numbers that were in place before the sequester went into effect. Where the post-sequester amount is available it is provided.

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

The President’s FY ‘14 appropriations budget request includes $385.8 million for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The agency’s request is a reduction of $5.7 million from the $391.5 million amount Congress provided for FY’13. NARA’s current budget under the sequester is $371 million.

NARA has requested $370.7 million for its operating expenses. This includes funding for rent, energy, security and staff costs at NARA’s facilities nationwide as well as operational costs of the Electronic Records Archives program.

NARA’s request also includes $4.1 million for the Office of Inspector General and $8 million for repairs and restorations to NARA-owned buildings, a 12 percent reduction from FY ‘12 funding level of $9.1 million.

To see detailed background on NARA’s proposed FY ’14 budget, click here.

National Historical Publications & Records Commission (NHPRC)

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission grants program would see its funding slashed from its FY ’13 appropriation of $5 million to $3 million, a 40 percent reduction. The NHPRC’s budget is $4.75 million under the sequester.

National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)

President Obama has requested FY 2014 funding of $154.4 million for the National Endowment for the Humanities. This represents an $8.4 million increase over the final FY 2013 appropriation of $146 million. Under the sequester, funding for NEH declined to $140 million.

The President’s request includes:

• $106.8 million for the Endowment’s grant programs in support of projects in the humanities, including $43.4 million for the operations, projects and programs of the 56 state and territorial humanities councils;
• $9 million to support NEH’s special initiative—Bridging Cultures—designed to renew and reinforce the bridges between the multiplicities of cultures and heritages that are part of the fabric of American life;
• $11.2 million in federal matching funds, including funds for the NEH Challenge Grants program to help stimulate and match private donations in support of humanities institutions and organizations;
• $27.4 million for salaries and expenses needed to operate the agency.

For a detailed breakdown of NEH’s budget at the programmatic level, visit the NEH’s website by clicking here.

U.S. Department of Education

K-12 History Education

The President’s fiscal year 2014 budget request for the Department of Education once again proposes consolidating K-12 history education into a new program called Effective Teaching and Learning for a Well-Rounded Education. In the FY’12 budget, funding for the Teaching American History (TAH) grants program were eliminated.

In FY ’14 the Administration proposes $75 million in funding for the new initiative. In FY ’13 the proposed amount was $90 million and in FY ‘12 that amount was $246 million, showing a clearly reduced commitment on the part of the Administration to the proposal. The Effective Teaching and Learning for a Well-Rounded Education program would support competitive grants to States, high-need LEAs, and nonprofit partners to develop and expand innovative practices to improve teaching and learning of the arts, foreign languages, history, government, economics and financial literacy, environmental education, physical education, health education, and other subjects. There would be no dedicated funding for any of the disciplines.

It is important to remember this reorganization of programs is dependent on the passage of a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the law that governs K-12 education. Congress has been stalemated on this issue for nearly 5 years and it is unlikely that an ESEA reauthorization bill will be enacted anytime soon.

Higher Education International Programs

The U.S. Department of Education’s International Education and Foreign Language Studies (IEFLS) programs, including HEA-Title VI and Fulbright-Hays programs, form the vital infrastructure of the federal government’s investment in the international expertise pipeline. The IEFLS programs support comprehensive language and area study centers within the United States, research and curriculum development, opportunities for American scholars to study and conduct research abroad, and activities to increase the number of underrepresented minorities in international service.

The Fulbright-Hays program is of particular importance to historians because of the resources they provide for research and education relating to foreign languages and cultures.

IEFLS Total:

• President’s FY ’14 Request: $81 million
• FY ’13: $74.1 million

Under the President’s proposed budget, the Fulbright-Hays program would be level funded while the Title VI Domestic Programs would see a fairly robust increase of $6.9 million.

Fulbright-Hays:

• President’s FY ’14 Budget Request: $7.5 million
• FY ’13: $7.5 million

Higher Education Act, Title VI-A&B (Domestic Programs)

• President’s FY ’14 Budget Request: $73.5 million (+$6.9 million)
• FY ’13: $66.6 million

For further detailed background about the Department of Education’s proposed FY ’14 budget click here.

Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)

President Obama has requested 225.8 million in fiscal year 2014 for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), a $6 million increase over the agency’s current funding. The IMLS is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 123,000 libraries and 17,500 museums.

To see further background on IMLS’s proposed FY ’14 budget, click here.

Museum Programs:

The President requested funding in FY ’14 of $32.9 million for museum programs. This reflects a $3.7 million (12.9 % increase) over the FY ’13 funding level.

Library Programs

The President requested $177 million for library programs, a slight increase over the FY ’13 level of $175 million.

National Park Service

The 2014 budget request for the Historic Preservation Fund is $58.9 million. Of this total, $46.9 million (level funding) is requested for grants-in-aid to States and Territories, $9 million is requested for grants-in-aid to Tribes, and $3.0 million would be allocated for new competitive grants targeted toward com¬munities currently underrepresented on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Heritage Partnership Program would see its grant funding cut nearly in half from the current $17 million to $9 million. This program supports the 49 National Heritage Areas created by Congress.

The budget also requests $5.5 million to acquire Civil War battlefield lands within national parks.

For further information about the National Park Service’s FY ’14 budget, click here.

Smithsonian Institution

The Administration’s fiscal year 2014 budget request to Congress for the Smithsonian Institution is $869 million, an increase of $59 million from the appropriation enacted in FY 2012—$810 million. For the current fiscal year, the Smithsonian has operated on a continuing resolution at the same level as the 2012 budget, less $41 million due to sequestration. However, the Smithsonian was granted two additions this year: $5 million for the National Museum of African American History and Culture scheduled to open in 2015 and $2 million for roof repairs following Hurricane Sandy.

The Salaries and Expenses request for FY 2014 is $711 million and the Facilities Capital budget is $158 million, which includes $55 million for the construction of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

For additional information about the Smithsonian’s proposed FY ’14 budget, click here.

Exhibit spaces at the National Archives Building in Washington, DC, are normally open to the public from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., seven days a week. In the past, the National Archives offered extended hours from March 15 through Labor Day, when the building stayed open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week. NARA will no longer offer these extended hours. Exhibit spaces at the National Archives Building in Washington DC will remain open to the public from 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., seven days a week, year round. The last admission will be at 5:00 p.m.

Research rooms at the National Archives Building in Washington, DC, and the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, are normally open to researchers six days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended hours from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. three days a week (Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday). NARA will no longer offer these extended hours. The research rooms will remain open to researchers from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday, year round.

In announcing the reduced hours, David S. Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States said: “We don’t take these reductions lightly. We are working hard to achieve our mission and minimize disruptions to the services we provide to the public.”

This agreement also allows the archives to retain its current hours of operation, which had been slated to be severely curtailed. Under the plan, the University System of Georgia will assume control of the Georgia Archives on July 1, 2013, pending approval of the state’s General Assembly. Existing archival staff will be supplemented by staff from the University System. The Secretary of State eliminated seven of the 10 positions at the State Archives on November 1.

The crisis was precipitated in September when Secretary of State Kemp announced he was closing the State Archives to the public on November 1 due to across-the-board budget cuts mandated by Governor Deal to close budget shortfalls.

On September 21, the National Coalition for History (NCH), the American Historical Association, and other constituent groups sent letters to the Governor opposing the budget cuts and denial of access to the Archives. It also generated tremendous media attention, including articles in the New York Times and Atlanta Journal Constitution.

The situation in Georgia should be a cautionary tale for all historians. As we’ve seen at the federal level, historical, archival, educational and preservation programs have increasingly been seen as easy targets by budget cutters because they are perceived as not having a broad constituency. Our community must remain vigilant and proactive in making the case that historical and archival programs are a public necessity, not a luxury.

With the ruling, the National Security Archive has moved a step closer to compelling openness for the only remaining unreleased volume of a draft history of the Bay of Pigs operation, written by a CIA staff historian in the 1980s. One volume of the five-volume history reached the public through the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board’s action in the 1990s; and the Archive filed its FOIA lawsuit for the remaining volumes in April 2011, on the 50th anniversary of the failed CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba.

The CIA released three volumes as a result of the FOIA lawsuit, but withheld the final volume by invoking a statutory exemption to the FOIA that protects “predecisional” and “deliberative” agency documents. Judge Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court sided with the CIA, explaining that the Agency could withhold this “predecisional” draft because it “does not want to discourage disagreement… among its historians.”

The Archive appealed to the D.C. Circuit, and the CIA then filed a motion for summary affirmance – in effect asking the court to decide in its favor without full briefing or oral argument. In opposing the CIA’s motion, the Archive received strong support from more than a dozen organizations representing tens of thousands of historians, archivists, political scientists, educators and researchers around the world, who warned that the CIA’s position could create a “chilling effect on access to historical materials.”

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the CIA’s motion, agreeing with the Archive and its supporters that the case merits the court’s full consideration, and set a briefing schedule through March 2013 for the lawsuit to continue.

“The CIA told the courts that a decades-old draft history should stay secret because it would ‘confuse the public’ and make CIA historians less candid,” remarked Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive. “In fact, that policy would put off limits half of what’s in our country’s National Archives, and the only confused people would be government itself, unable to learn from its own mistakes because the history was locked under Maxwell Smart’s Cone of Silence.”

Allon Kedem and Cliff Sloan of the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher, and Flom represent the Archive in this case as part of the firm’s pro bono publico commitment. Veteran FOIA litigator David Sobel represented the Archive in the first stages of the case and won the release of three volumes of the history. The director of the Archive’s Cuba Documentation Project, Peter Kornbluh, wrote and filed the original Freedom of Information Act request in the case.

The PIDB is an advisory committee established by Congress to promote public access to a thorough, accurate, and reliable documentary record of significant U.S. national security decisions and activities. The Board made 14 specific recommendations in four broad categories: classification, declassification, technology, and managing historically significant records. The full report can be found at: www.archives.gov/declassification/pidb/recommendations/transforming-classification.html.

The PIDB concluded that the current processes and policies for classifying and declassifying information need to undergo a complete overhaul: “The current system, created seventy years ago, is outdated and incapable of dealing adequately with the large volumes of classified information generated in an era of digital communications and information systems.” The board recommended the secrecy system be streamlined and better aligned with safeguarding practices and less information should be classified overall. They also felt that there needs to be a better balance between what is classified and what is available to the American public.

The PIDB called on the president to aggressively take the lead in reforming the classification system: “Overcoming entrenched practices that no longer serve the purpose of protecting our national security will prove difficult. We believe it will require a White House-led steering committee to drive reform, led by a chair that is carefully selected and appointed with specific authorities that you grant.”

Of particular interest to historians is the recommendation concerning the prioritization of the preservation and processing of “historically significant records.” The PIDB suggested that these records “should be identified and set aside as early as possible after their creation to ensure their preservation, long-term access and availability to agency policymakers and historians. Each agency should have an in-house history staff to assist agency records officers and declassifiers in the prioritization of records.”

Through the use of existing technologies, including data tagging, the PIDB recommended historically significant records should be prepositioned for review and timely public release. The board felt selection of these records should reflect a reasoned judgment as to what information will be of the most interest to the public or future policymakers. The board stated, “Expedited access to these historical records will aid policymakers in retrieving the documentary records of past policy decisions, lending context to contemporary decision-making while cataloging valuable information for future analysis and public release. Such material not only informs public discussion of historical decisions and policies, but is also intrinsically important in documenting the Government’s national security history.”

This includes independent Senators Sanders of Vermont and Senator-Elect Angus King of Maine, who have said they will caucus with the Democrats.

The post-election period is critical as the jockeying for assignments to prime committees, and the selection of subcommittee chairs and ranking members, takes place within each party’s caucuses. Who fills these slots has a great bearing on what will take place in the next two years.

At this point, most predictions as to who will end up where are speculative at best. However, we do know that there will be major changes in the committees that fund and oversee the National Archives and National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

In the Senate, with the retirement of Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), Senator Thomas Carper (D-Del.) will assume the chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which oversees NARA and the NHPRC. Carper has chaired the subcommittee for several years and had been a strong advocate for their programs.

Ranking Member Susan Collins (R-Me.), also generally positively disposed toward NARA, will be replaced by Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) who has gained a reputation as the most aggressive budget cutter in the U.S. Senate. Coburn, who is a physician, has earned the nickname “Dr. No” for his zealous attempts to reign in federal spending and has already demonstrated his disdain for humanities programs. For example, in 2010 the Senate rejected an amendment by Sen. Coburn that would have eliminated funding for the political science program at the National Science Foundation (NSF).

On the House side, Representative Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.), who chairs the Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government announced, after she had been re-elected, that she was resigning to become CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. Her loss will be deeply felt since she has been a moderate voice in comparison to many of her Tea Party colleagues and has been as supportive of funding for NARA and the NHPRC as possible. It is unknown at this time who will replace her.

We will have further updates on changes in the key players once the 113th Congress convenes in January.

Among the items known to be stolen from the Roosevelt Library, which is part of the National Archives and Records Administration, were seven “reading copies” of speeches that President Roosevelt delivered. They contained President Roosevelt’s edits and handwritten additions, along with his signature. The speeches have all been recovered.

Savedoff’s co-conspirator, Barry Landau, pled guilty, and was sentenced on July 28, 2012, to seven years in prison and three years of supervised release.

Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero thanked the Maryland Historical Society, the National Archives’ Holdings Protection Team and Office of the Inspector General, and the U.S. Justice Department, for bringing the case to justice. He stated: “Close coordination with these tireless stewards allowed us to stop Jason Savedoff and Barry Landau, to build a case against them, and to bring them to justice.”

According to court records, seven “reading copies” of President Roosevelt’s speeches were stolen when Savedoff and Landau visited the Roosevelt Presidential Library on December 2, 2010. “Reading copies” are the actual copies of the speeches from which the President read. They contain edits and handwritten annotations made by him and bear his signature.

Four of these “reading copies” of speeches were sold to a collector on December 20, 2010, for $35,000. Three other “reading copies” of inaugural addresses delivered by President Roosevelt were recovered elsewhere. Each was valued at more than $100,000, and one was the water-stained reading copy of the inaugural address President Roosevelt delivered in a steady rain in 1937.

Grants totaling $1.2 million went to nine publishing projects from the U.S. Colonial and Early National period, including the papers of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Dolley Madison, and John Jay. Also funded were projects to record the documentary history of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution and the documentary history of the first Federal Congress.

Grants totaling $750,000 went to the State and National Archives Partnership (SNAP) to enable 30 state historical records advisory boards to fund archival education and strengthen the nation’s archival network. Fourteen of those states received funds for “regrant” projects, which will help them fund small and local archives and historical records repositories.

Digitizing historical records grants, totaling $420,000, went to four projects: the University of Florida will digitize and make available more than 36,000 pages of diaries and manuscripts from the end of the Colonial period to the beginnings of the modern state; Princeton University will digitize more than 400,000 pages of six Cold War-related manuscript collections; Harvard University will digitize 189,074 pages, covering four generations of the Blackwell Family from 1784 to 1981, that cover abolition, temperance, women’s suffrage, and education; and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation in Springfield, Illinois, will digitize the records of Richard Yates, Sr., governor of Illinois 1861-1865.

Three Electronic Records grants, totaling $235,000, went to: the Council of State Archivists for a two-year project to strengthen the capacity of states and territories to manage and preserve electronic records; an electronic records start-up project at the Guggenheim Museum in New York; and a planning grant for the Missouri Office of the Secretary of State to establish an electronic records archives.

The materials included in this opening consist of documents accumulated by Robert F. Kennedy in his capacity as both Attorney General and advisor to President Kennedy. The files relate chiefly to matters that ordinarily do not come under the jurisdiction of the Attorney General or the Justice Department, and include memos, correspondence, reports, notes from Executive Committee meetings, as well as CIA and State Department telegrams and cables chiefly related to the United States relationship with Cuba during the years 1961 to 1963 – a time which included the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs invasion.

While the majority of these materials will be opened in full, some will remain restricted because of classified material: no documents are closed due to restrictions related to personal privacy concerns.

MFA and NLG-M programs will support projects that do the following:

• Place the learner at the center and create engaging experiences in museums that prepare people to be full participants in their local communities and global society.
• Promote museums as strong community anchors that enhance civic engagement, cultural opportunities, and economic vitality.
• Support exemplary stewardship of museum collections and promote the use of technology to facilitate discovery of knowledge and cultural heritage.

For more information on how to apply, please visit:

Museums for America: Program Guidelines and IMLS Contacts on the IMLS website

National Leadership Grants for Museums: Program Guidelines and IMLS Contacts on the IMLS website

Highlights include collaboration between faculty and administrators at the University of Virginia and five Virginia community colleges to develop community college curricula for the study of the religions and cultures of Asia, the Middle East, and Russia.

In this cycle, grants were awarded in the following categories:

• Awards for Faculty support advanced research in the humanities by teachers at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges and Universities.
• Bridging Cultures at Community Colleges cooperative agreements support the development and administration of a national or regional project to advance the role of the humanities at community colleges through curriculum and faculty development focused on the theme of Bridging Cultures.
• Bridging Cultures through Film Grants support the development and production of documentary films that examine international and transnational themes in the humanities.
• Challenge Grants strengthen the humanities by encouraging non-federal sources of support and helping institutions secure long-term improvements in and support for their humanities programs and resources. Recipients are required to match NEH funds on a three-to-one or, in some cases, two-to-one basis.
• Fellowships support college and university teachers and independent scholars pursuing advanced research.
• Fellowships for Advanced Social Science Research on Japan is a joint activity of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission (JASFC) and the NEH. Awards support research on modern Japanese society and political economy, Japan’s international relations, and U.S.-Japan relations.
• Humanities Initiatives Grants are intended to strengthen and enrich humanities education and scholarship at Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Tribal Colleges and Universities.
• NEH on the Road Grants extend the reach of museum exhibitions redesigned for travel to smaller-scale institutions in cities throughout America.
• Preservation and Access Research and Development Grants support projects that address major challenges in preserving or providing access to humanities collections and resources.
• Preservation Assistance Grants help institutions—particularly small and mid-sized institutions—improve their ability to preserve and care for their humanities collections, including special collections of books and journals, archives and manuscripts, prints and photographs, moving images, sound recordings, architectural and cartographic records, decorative and fine arts, textiles, archaeological and ethnographic artifacts, furniture, and historical objects.
• Preservation Education and Training Grants help the staff of cultural institutions obtain the knowledge and skills needed to serve as effective stewards of humanities collections. Grants also support educational programs that prepare the next generation of conservators and preservation professionals, as well as projects that introduce the staff of cultural institutions to recent improvements in preservation and access practices.
• Small Grants to Libraries: America’s Music allow institutions to host a six-week public program featuring documentary film screenings and scholar-led discussions on twentieth-century American popular music.

The NDC led a multi-agency project to identify and review the records for declassification. Any additional Katyn-related documents identified in the future will be expedited for release and notice will be posted on the NDC’s blog.

On May 1, 2009, Professor Luke Nichter of Texas A&M University-Central Texas petitioned Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the District Court for the District of Columbia to release records sealed in the case of U.S. v. Liddy, the Watergate break-in case. The sealed proceedings include evidentiary discussions held outside the jury’s hearing, pretrial discussions between defendants’ lawyers and the Court, and post-trial sentencing information.

On November 2, 2012, the District Court for the District of Columbia ordered most of these records to be unsealed, given the passage of time, completion of the criminal proceedings, and non-invasive nature of the content. Consistent with the recommendation of the Department of Justice, the court ordered that the following categories of records remain sealed, pending further review by the court:

• Personal documents regarding living individuals;
• Documents regarding the content of illegally obtained wiretaps; and
• Grand Jury information.

The National Archives released the U.S. v. Liddy records, with the three categories of contested materials removed and marked “Court Sealed.” If/when the Court later unseals additional materials, the National Archives will make them available.

Mr. Bosanko’s appointment will follow the retirement from government service of the current Chief Operating Officer, Thomas E. Mills, on December 31, 2012.

Mr. Bosanko has been the National Archives’ Executive for Agency Services since 2011, a job that entails assessing records management needs of Federal agencies and representing the public interest in the accountability and transparency of their records. He also oversees many National Archives offices including the Office of the Chief Records Officer, the nationwide Federal Records Centers, the Office of Government Information Services, the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), and the National Declassification Center.

Prior to that appointment, he directed ISOO for three years, overseeing the government-wide security classification system and the National Industrial Security Program. He also served on the Presidential Task Force on Controlled Unclassified Information and served as the Executive Agent for oversight of that government-wide program.

Mr. Bosanko began his career with the National Archives in February of 1993, first as an Archives Technician, then as an Archivist, and later as a Management and Program Analyst, working with the Records Declassification Division, the Special Access and FOIA Staff, and ISOO. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from Susquehanna University (Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania).

Ms. Wright will lead the agency in developing innovative ways to share the National Archives’ extensive holdings with the public. She plans to create a so-called “Innovation Hub” to develop and launch collaborative projects, raise public challenges, and form partnerships with the archival community, industry, and academic institutions.

Ms. Wright started at the National Archives in 2001 and has spent the past seven years promoting digital access and strategy. Prior to this appointment, she served as the agency’s first Chief Digital Access Strategist and launched many of the National Archives’ now robust social media platforms. She created a “Citizen Archivist Dashboard” to make National Archives records more accessible online by using crowdsourcing to tag, transcribe, and edit articles, as well as to upload and share scans or images of records. She also advanced the first agency tool for online internal communication – the Internal Collaboration Network (ICN).

Ms. Wright represents the National Archives on the White House Open Government Working Group. She has spearheaded several internal working groups and teams dedicated to advancing the “Open Government” goals of transparency, participation, and collaboration.

She began her career at the National Archives as a processing archivist. She holds Bachelor’s degrees in History and English from the University of Montana, and earned a Master’s Certificate in Project Management from George Washington University

FOIAonline (http://FOIAonline.Regulations.gov), formerly known as the FOIA Module, is now available online. It offers the public one place to submit FOIA requests, track their progress, communicate with the processing agency, search other requests, access previously released responsive documents and file appeals with participating agencies.

For agencies, FOIAonline provides a secure website to receive and store requests, assign and process requests, post responses, generate metrics, manage records electronically, create management reports and electronically generate the annual report required from each agency by FOIA.

Six Federal agencies now have partnered to develop and deploy FOIAonline along with EPA, including Commerce, NARA, the Department of the Treasury, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, and the Merit Systems Protection Board, each of which will deploy on its own schedule.

FOIAonline can be accessed at http://FOIAonline.Regulations.gov. While you can send requests to the participating agencies now, the data available in the system are initially minimal and variable by agency. The partner agencies will continue to enhance the system and they welcome other agencies’ participation.

As a result of this National Archives–NOAA partnership, and with the aid of citizen scientists, anyone, anywhere, with online access can glimpse a wealth of weather data and climate patterns from an age long before the Weather Channel.

In addition to weather data, these logbooks offer invaluable information on U.S. maritime history, military operations, scientific exploration, diplomacy, advances in technology, and near-hourly accounts of adventures on the high seas, including rescues and shipwrecks.

Digital images of the logbooks will be available on both the National Archives website at www.archives.gov and at www.oldweather.org. This ongoing digitization is part of the Obama-Medvedev Commission, which supports US-Russian relations through cooperation in many areas, including scientific study

The Presidential Documents app includes the President’s Executive orders, speeches, statements, communications to Congress and Federal Agencies, approved acts, nominations submitted to the Senate, White House announcements, and White House press releases. The app’s user-friendly search engine can be searched by date, category, subject, or location.

Grant projects include fee simple purchases at Perryville, Kentucky ($43,715); Mill Springs, Kentucky ($330,500); Bentonville, North Carolina ($168, 720); Franklin, Tennessee ($112,800); Second Manassas, Virginia ($196,500); Peebles’ Farm, Virginia; and Totopotomoy Creek, Virginia ($91,600); and the purchase of an easement at Cool Springs, Virginia ($1,500,000).

The grants were made from the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program (ABPP) to help states and local communities acquire and preserve threatened Civil War battlefield land outside the boundaries of National Park units. Priority was given to battlefields listed in the National Park Service’s Civil War Sites Advisory Commission Report on the Nation’s Civil War Battlefields (CWSAC Report). Funds were awarded based on the property’s location within CWSAC-defined core and/or study areas, the threat to the battlefield land to be acquired, and the availability of required non-Federal matching funds.

The grant funds were made available under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012 (Public Law 112-74), which appropriated $8,985,600 for the Civil War battlefield land acquisition grants program.

Under the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program, research projects deepen knowledge on and help the nation develop capability in areas of the world not generally included in U.S. curricula.

The Fulbright Program, of which the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program is a part, dates to 1946 when the late-U.S. Sen. J. William Fulbright sponsored legislation to create the program as a means to increase mutual understanding between America and the rest of the world.

The Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad program holds an annual competition, based on funding. Eligible applicants are American institutions of higher education. Students apply through the institution they are enrolled in.

For the list of the recipients of the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program click here.