NCC Washington Update, Vol 6, #2, January 19, 2000
by Page Putnam Miller, Director of the National Coordinating
Committee for the Promotion of History <pagem@capaccess.org>
(As a temporary precaution to avoid Y2K problems with obsolete
software, CapAccess, the NCC's Internet provider, is dating messages
with the
year 1972 instead of 2000. I hope this hasn't caused any difficulty for
you
in receiving the NCC Updates.)
1. President's FY 2001 Budget
2. Civil War Scholar McPherson Named
Jefferson Lecturer for 2000
3. National Archives Loses 43,000 E-Mail
Messages
4. Work of the Senate Historical Office
Underscores Need for a House History Office
1. President's FY 2001 Budget - On January 27 the President will give
his
"State of the Union" address highlighting the recommendations in the
Administration's 2001 budget. On February 7 the President will forward
his budget to the Congress and at that time it will be made public. It
appears that the President and the Congress may, in light of increasing
budget surplus projections, decide to ignore the 1997 budget deficit
legislation that placed very restrictive caps on 2001 domestic
discretionary funding. If lawmakers adhered to the budget caps,
significant cuts would be required this year in the budgets of many
federal agencies.
2. Civil War Scholar McPherson Named Jefferson Lecturer for 2000 - On
January 11 the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities,
William Ferris, announced that the National Council on the Humanities
had
named historian James M. McPherson as the Jefferson Lecturer in the
Humanities. McPherson, who has taught history at Princeton University
for
almost four decades, is a highly respected historian of the Civil War.
His Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil
War Era (1988), is considered by many to be the best single-volume
history
of the American Civil War. In the mid-90s McPherson served as president
of Protect Historic America, which successfully led an effort to protect
Virginia's Manassas Battlefield from commercial encroachment. The
annual
NEH-sponsored Jefferson Lecture is the highest honor the federal
government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the
humanities.
McPherson will present his lecture, titled "For a Vast Future Also:
Lincoln and the Millennium," on Monday, March 27 at 7:30 pm in the
Concert
Hall of the Kennedy Center. The lecture is open to the public and those
interested in attending should send a n e-mail to info@neh.gov to
request
an invitation.
3. National Archives Loses 43,000 E-Mail Messages - On January 6 the
Washington Post reported on the loss at the National Archives last
summer
of 43,000 e-mail messages accumulated over a four month period from the
Archivist's office, the headquarters office of the regional archives,
and
five staff units. Although the National Archives was suppose to have a
backup system that could replace missing e-mail messages, it was not
working properly. Thus there was no way to restore the lost messages to
the system. National Archives' officials have been unable to determine
what caused the erasures. Part of the problem seemed to rest with the
failure of the contractor that the National Archives used to handle its
computer and backup systems. Following the Post article, the National
Archives released a statement stressing that no records of other federal
agencies were affected, nor any Presidential, Congressional, or court
records. Yet the experience emphasized the vulnerability of electronic
records and the loss that can occur when an agency does not have
effective
and reliable electronic recordkeeping systems. This was a particularly
embarrassing experience for the National Archives since it is the agency
in the federal government responsible for issuing guidance to other
federal agencies on the preservation of their electronic records.
4. Work of the Senate Historical Office Underscores Need for a House
Historical Office - The Senate Historical Office is undertaking an oral
history project to create a record of the Clinton impeachment trial.
The
Senate Historical Office is focusing on senior support personnel and
people who worked behind the scenes who would not usually be
interviewed.
In the last week both the Washington Post and The Hill, a weekly
publication that focuses on Congress, have applauded this work of the
Senate Historical Office and have pointed out the deficiencies of the
House of Representatives in not having a Historical Office. Soon after
Speaker of the House Gingrich (R-GA) fired the long time and respected
House Historian in 1994, the House dismantled the Historical Office.
A January 19 editorial in "The Hill" states: "Yet, unlike the Senate,
the
House - the institution that voted to impeach a president for the first
time in 140 years - has no official mechanism to help scholars and
future
historians better understand the legal maneuvering, partisan conflicts
and
personal passions that led to impeachment." Likewise a January 17
Washington Post article titled " Revisiting Impeachment, With Senate
Staff," notes that an official in the House of Representatives said that
the House does not have the staff to make any special efforts to
preserve
the impeachment process. However, the Post article concludes on a
positive note by stating that "the House has just begun the process of
looking for a House historian."
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