Hi. I'm Jill Reilly, Director for Digital Engagement in the Office of Innovation
at the National Archives, where we transform innovative ideas into action,
promote community engagement and partnerships, maintain consistent standards across the agency,
and provide access to NARA's holdings online.
The National Archives Catalog is the Federal Government's online portal to records held at
the National Archives. The Catalog describes over 95% of the records in the National Archives' vast
holdings and provides access to digital copies of more than 200 million pages of records.
It is an important resource for research, transparency, and accountability.
In the Fifth U.S. Open Government National Action Plan, the National Archives committed to
improving the Catalog over the next two years. We introduced the new Catalog with a
beta public preview period and then launched the new Catalog site in 2022. You can explore the
new catalog at catalog.archives.gov. Next, we will enhance
the Catalog with expanded user contribution types and more user experience enhancements.
The Digital Engagement Division staff manages the Catalog, and we maintain and provide training on
the agency's description policy and standards. Our division is responsible for working across
the agency to ensure future access to our records, both digitized and born digital.
Catalog technical staff import digital records and metadata and ensure data integrity.
Hi. I'm Kerry Gooden-Robertson, the Technical Program Supervisor in the Digital Engagement Division.
The new Catalog focuses on scalability and is a new, modern platform prepared for the future.
In the next few years, we will grow to 500 million digitized pages.
We used the new optical character recognition or OCR tool on all of the digital documents already
in the Catalog, which had been OCR'ed with earlier tools or never had OCR before.
The OCR supports keyword full-text searching across the digitized and born digital documents.
This and other new technical enhancements will ensure an improved search experience.
The new Catalog has a new application programming interface or API 2.0 to facilitate access to the
Catalog data. The new, more user-friendly documentation is available through Swagger,
at catalog.archives.gov/api/v2/api-docs/. Email us at api@nara.gov to request
an API key and ask any questions.
Hi. I'm Erica Boudreau, the Description Program Supervisor in the Digital Engagement Division. Our new Catalog makes it easier and more
intuitive for you to find what you are looking for, and potentially discover related content of interest.
This redesigned Catalog is the result of a two-year agile development process,
focusing on user research and testing. We used the shared U.S. web design standards
and a human-centered design approach. The new Catalog uses a mobile-first design and a flexible
display layout that makes it easier to reszie for different screens and devices.
Accessibility features are enhanced and streamlined. Many thanks to all of our volunteers
who answered the call to provide input, feedback, and testing.
You can create a Catalog user account using Login.gov and make contributions to the Catalog
to enhance access and discoverability. Transcribe handwritten documents,
tag archival photographs, or share comments with other community members and the public.
Additional contribution types and more enhancements to the user experience are coming in 2023 and 2024.
Learn more about opportunities to contribute at archives.gov/citizen-archivist. Keep up to date
on the latest news and updates by subscribing to the Catalog Community Email Newsletter at
archives.gov/research/catalog/newsletter. Visit us at catalog.archives.gov.