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NCC Washington Update, Vol. 6, no. 2, (January 19, 2000)



Here it is folks, not in the usual format since this was copied from the
NCC archives.  If you'd like to review the archives for what you may
have missed, the URL is:

http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~ncc/ncc00/

Holly Hodges
UTChattanooga
________________________________

NCC Washington Update, Vol 6, no. 2, (January 19, 2000)

Page Putnam Miller, Director of the National Coordinating Committee for
the Promotion of History pagem@capaccess.org

   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 Histori cal 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."



Send comments and questions to Dr. Page Putnam Miller
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