Federal Records in the BDC and on the Web

Last Sunday, I introduced the concept of government records. As promised, today's topic is Federal Records in the Research Room and the major portals to United States documents on the internet. Please refer to that post for the schedule and topics for the rest of this series.

The main portal to Federal Information and Services is the USA.gov website. There you can find out about the structure of the Federal government, how to find benefits, grants, and loans, or even a job. There's an A-Z Index of U.S. Government Agencies covering a gamut of agencies from Alhurra TV with a mission is to provide objective, accurate, and relevant news and information to the people of the Middle East about the region, the world, and the United States to the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor charged to safeguard the interests of working women, advocate for equality, and promote quality work environments. In the course of daily business, these U.S. Government Agencies create records, piles and piles of records, which become the responsibility of the National Archives and Record Administration to manage and from which to select appropriate records to preserve for their importance to the workings of Government, for their long-term research worth, or because the records provide information of value to citizens.

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) preserves U.S. government records, manages the Presidential Libraries system, and publishes laws, regulations, Presidential, and other public documents.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the National Archives in 1934 to become the  steward of United States government records from 1775 forward. Earlier this year, the NARA estimated its holdings to be 10,061,700,000 text, image, video and sound recordings plus 133 terabytes of electronic records.

According to the National Archives, "Records include all books, papers, maps, photographs, machine-readable materials, or other documentary materials, regardless of physical form or characteristics, made or received by an agency of the United States Government under Federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business  ... as evidence of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities of the Government." Even so, the National Archives retains approximately 2 - 5% of Federal government records made each year for their long-term research value. The guidelines for retaining Federal records are found in 44 U.S.C. 3301. (Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute has this code posted online at https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/44/chapter-33).

The place to start getting acquainted with what's in the National Archives is the 
Guide to Federal Records in the National Archives. This guide provides a general overview of NARA's holdings of federal records at the record group level, and is intended to assist researchers in identifying which record groups may have material relevant to their research topics. Many records only briefly identified in the Guide are more fully described in the National Archives Catalog and researchers are encouraged to consult these online resources in tandem. 

NARA arranges its holdings according to the archival principle of provenance. This principle provides that records be

• attributed to the agency that created or maintained them and
• arranged thereunder as they were filed when in active use.

The Society of American Archivists thesaurus defines a record group as  "n. ~ A collection of records that share the same provenance and are of a convenient size for administration." In the National Archives, application of the principle of provenance takes the form of numbered record groups, with each record group comprising the records of a major government entity, usually a bureau or an independent agency. For example, National Archives Record Group 29 is Records of the Bureau of the Census. NARA has posted guides to many of its Record Groups and its topical holdings.

Most record groups include records of any predecessors of the organization named in the title of the record group. A few record groups combine the records of several small or short-lived agencies having an administrative or functional relationship with each other. An example of this type of record group is Record Group 76, Records of Boundary and Claims Commissions and Arbitrations.
The number assigned to a record group reflects the order in which it was established by the National Archives.

Within a record group, the records of a government agency are organized into series. Each series is a set of documents arranged according to the creating office's filing system or otherwise kept together by the creating office because they

• relate to a particular subject or function,
• result from the same activity,
• document a specific kind of transaction,
• take a particular physical form, or
• have some other relationship arising out of their creation, receipt, or use.

With the “Know Your Records” lecture series, you can learn more about the National Archives Catalog, how to use U.S. Federal Government records for historical and genealogical research, and dive deeper into a topic that interests you.

The South Carolina State Library is a member of the Federal Depository Library Program, also known as the FDLP.

South Carolina State Library's Sheila Dorsey, Collection Librarian, writes a column for the More newsletter. She has often explained that libraries within the FDLP serve to connect the public with Federal Government information and tends to feature a specific Federal agency every other column or so. The State Library is a selective depository, which means it chooses materials in subject areas which we determine will be of the most interest or help to South Carolinians. The State Library is required to provide access to both the Federal Register, the official daily publication for Presidential documents and executive orders, rules, proposed rules, and notices of Federal agencies and organizations, and the Code of Federal Regulations comprised of 50 titles representing broad areas which are subject to Federal regulation. It is completely revised at least once a year on a quarterly basis. 

From the South Carolina State Library website:

The South Carolina State Library is a congressionally designated depository for U.S. Government documents. Public access to the government documents collection is guaranteed by public law (Title 44 United States Code). The Federal Documents can be searched in our online catalog, SCLENDS.
A selection of digitized materials from the Federal Documents can be accessed through the South Carolina Federal Documents. Further information can be found in the Federal Documents Guide.

The State Library goes one step further and in addition to displaying the availability of physical items, it provides a link to a digital copy of many Federal publications, or to the Federal Government web page where current and past issues of the title may be found. 

Federal Records in the Beaufort District Collection

Some of the federal records held in the Research Room are listed in the SCLENDS catalog. The non-current Flood Maps created by the Federal Emergency Management Administration, charts produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and maps made by United States Geological Survey are all cataloged. We have some Environmental Protection Agency documents relating to Superfund sites in Beaufort County; we have some Federal documents relating to the operation of the Marine Corps and Naval bases in Beaufort County; and we have some Federal documents relating to former Congressmen such as Robert Barnwell Rhett, Robert Smalls and William Elliott:

SC 975.799 ROB  Robert Smalls vs. William Elliot, United States House of Representatives. Washington, D.C.:  House of Representatives, 1888. 50th Congress, 2nd session, H.R. 3536.

SC B SMALLS  Arrest and Imprisonment of Hon. Robert Smalls: January 25, 1878 [pamphlet] by  Mr. Knott. Washington, D.C.: House of Representatives, 1878. 45th Congress, 1st session, no. 100.

We have all our microfilm listed in the SCLENDS catalog including Federal Census records for the Beaufort District area, 1790 - 1880, 1900 - 1930; the statewide Union Veterans and Widows Census for 1890; Naturalization Records and Registers of Aliens, 1908-1941; Record of Admissions to Citizenship, District of South Carolina, 1790-1906;  and the Civil War and Reconstruction era record series Index to and Heads of Family Land Certificates, 1863-1872; Tax Sale Certificates, 1864; Land Sale Certificates, 1869-1870; 1875-1876; and Abstract of Voter Registrations reported to the Military Government, 1868. Some of these series are available through our subscription to Ancestry Library Edition. 

Because of remodeling in Beaufort Branch last year, the BDC received plenty of GoDocs to review. Amanda has created a spreadsheet of what came upstairs to the BDC to be evaluated for permanent retention or discard. The timeline for completion of this project is December 2018.