Above: Governor Deal
The only state in the USA to cut historic service
13 September 2012
"The Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget has instructed the Office of the Secretary of State to further reduce its budget for AFY13 and FY14 by 3% ($732,626). As it has been for the past two years, these cuts do not eliminate excess in the agency, but require the agency to further reduce services to the citizens of Georgia. As an agency that returns over three times what is appropriated back to the general fund, budget cuts present very challenging decisions. We have tried to protect the services that the agency provides in support of putting people to work, starting small businesses, and providing public safety.
To meet the required cuts, it is with great remorse that I have to announce, effective November 1, 2012, the Georgia State Archives located in Morrow, GA will be closed to the public. The decision to reduce public access to the historical records of this state was not arrived at without great consternation. To my knowledge, Georgia will be the only state in the country that will not have a central location in which the public can visit to research and review the historical records of their government and state. The staff that currently works to catalog, restore, and provide reference to the state of Georgia’s permanent historical records will be reduced. The employees that will be let go through this process are assets to the state of Georgia and will be missed. After November 1st, the public will only be allowed to access the building by appointment; however, the number of appointments could be limited based on the schedule of the remaining employees.
Since FY08, the Office of the Secretary of State has been required to absorb many budget reductions, often above the minimum, while being responsible for more work. I believe that transparency and open access to records are necessary for the public to educate themselves on the issues of our government. I will fight during this legislative session to have this cut restored so the people will have a place to meet, research, and review the historical records of Georgia."
Comments
Georgia State Archives To Remain Open
10 December 2012
Georgia Governor Nathan Deal and Secretary of State Brian Kemp announced in October that the state will restore funding to keep the Georgia State Archives open until the end of the state’s fiscal year on June 30, 2013. Public pressure put on the governor by archivists, historians and other stakeholders clearly motivated Deal’s commitment to keep the Archives open.
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 Amer.... 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.
Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp Releases Plan on Archives Access
(Atlanta, GA) – The Georgia Archives currently averages 74 patrons per week (296/month). The average visitor spends 3 hours at the Archives.
The following plan will allow 78 (36 2-hour; 42 2.5-hour) appointments per month in the Open Documents Research Area (ODRA), 120 (2 hour) appointments per month in Microfilm Reference, and 90 (2 hour) appointments per month in Open Reference. This would allow 288 visitors, which is 97% of the visitors that Archives accommodates now, but they will be limited to 2 or 2.5 hours. If the staff finds that they are able to handle more researchers at a time, the number of appointments will be increased. ODRA users will have to provide staff with specific requests when they make the appointment so they can have records pulled and waiting on them when they arrive.
To make appointments, individuals can contact Christopher M. Davidson at cdavidson@sos.ga.gov or 678.364.3714.
“I will continue to work with the Governor, General Assembly and other interested parties to restore funding and access to the Archives,” said Kemp.
Brian Kemp has been Secretary of State since January, 2010. Among the office’s wide-ranging responsibilities, the Secretary of State is charged with conducting efficient and secure elections, the registration of corporations, and the regulation of securities and professional license holders. The office also oversees the Georgia Archives.
Budget Cuts to Hobble State Archives in Georgia
The Georgia archives has state-of-the art equipment, including four floodproof vaults in the building’s core.
By KIM SEVERSON
Published: 26 September 2012
MORROW, Ga. — The Georgia Archives, which holds both historical curiosities and virtually every important state government document ever created, is about to become nearly impossible to visit.
The move will make Georgia the only state without an archives open to the public on a regular basis. But this closing is simply the most severe symptom of a greater crisis facing permanent government collections in nearly every state, professional archivists say.
An amalgam of recession-driven budget cuts and fast-moving technological changes could result in a black hole of government information whose impact might not be understood for decades.
“When our humor gets black, we talk about this as a period of time that could be the Dark Ages for public records,” said Vicki Walch, the executive director of the Council of State Archivists. “Fifteen years on either side of the year 2000 is very dicey.”
Every state has an archive, which is mandated to hold the official records of government and, by default, the history of the state.
Laws governing which records must be saved and for how long vary from state to state. But all archives offer a trove of information. One can track who met with a governor, trace the history of every state law, find out whether a particular person held a professional license and pore over tax records.
Genealogy is big business for archives, too. As part of a television series, the restaurateur and cookbook author Paula Deen searched for her family history at the Georgia building here and discovered an ancestor who once owned slaves.
The records are often used to settle legal disputes. When two Georgia counties were in a fight over the sales tax revenue from a lucrative Bass Pro shop that straddled their boundaries, they turned to the state archives to settle things.
“The archives are like an insurance policy,” said Richard Pearce-Moses, director of the archival studies program at Clayton State University, which is near the Georgia Archives Building south of Atlanta. “There is a good chance we might never need to know where the county line is, but when we do, we really, really need to know.”
Increasingly, government records are being produced electronically, and agencies use a variety of software to collect and store them. But technology is changing so quickly that few protocols exist on how to gather and protect digital records from tampering. That applies to those once produced on paper as well as new forms of communication, like government Web sites and Facebook pages.
As a result, governments have to decide at what point an electronic birth certificate, for example, will be considered an acceptable legal document.
“A lot of this is untested in court,” said Sarah Koonts, the director of archives and records in North Carolina. “What kind of metadata do we need to have around an electronic record to prove it’s authentic?”
As with paper, preservation is an issue, too. No one knows how today’s technology may hold up and which methods of collection may go the way of the floppy disk, leaving a pile of pixels no one can read in 50 years.
State archivists are scrambling to learn how best to handle digital records just as they are absorbing the largest budget cuts in recent memory.
City and county governments are shrinking, too, so local officials are either not collecting as much information or simply sending what they do collect straight to the state repositories.
The volume of paper records held by state archives jumped to more than 3.9 million linear feet in 2012 from about 2.5 million linear feet in 2006, according to a survey by the Council of State Archivists.
“It would be one thing if the archives could say we are going to quit collecting paper and just collect electrons,” Mr. Pearce-Moses said. “But we are getting more digital content on top of more paper.”
In South Carolina, where the oldest document in the archives was created in 1671, W. Eric Emerson, the director of archives and history, is trying to hold on. At its peak in the 1980s, his department employed 125 people. Now there are 28. He has had to give up on conservation completely.
“Budgets are being cut and staffs are shrinking at the exact time when we need to be adapting and spending on digital infrastructure,” he said. “If you are in a state that thinks government should be smaller, it’s just far more challenging.”
His fear, like that of other archivists, is that “20 or 30 years from now, this will be a period in which numerous government records were lost.”
It’s more than just adding server space and storing files shipped in from other agencies.
“That’s like taking 200,000 documents, throwing them in a Dumpster and telling a researcher: What you need is in there. Go get it,” he said.
There are some bright spots. Gov. Nathan Deal of Georgia has said he will push to restore some financing for the state archives in the coming budget cycle, and new federal grant money is available to train archivists in electronic records.
In August, the Obama administration issued a directive aimed at overhauling the way federal agencies manage and preserve records. Many state archivists hope those protocols will inform their work.
Meanwhile, debates over what to keep and what to throw away continue.
“Is the Twitter feed of Gov. Jan Brewer in Arizona a public record? Yes. No question,” Mr. Pearce-Moses said.
“Whether or not it has to be kept and where to keep it is another question,” he added. “What it really boils down to right now is triage.”
A version of this article appeared in print on September 27, 2012, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: Budget Cuts to Hobble State Archives in Georgia .
The following letter has been sent on behalf of the Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA) to the Governor of the State of Georgia concerning the State of Georgia Archives. Due to budget cuts, as of November 1, the public will only be allowed to access the state’s archives by appointment only.
To see copies of the ACA's letter, please go to the Submissions & Letters webpage on the ACA website.
For more information on this issue, please click here.
Best Regards
Loryl MacDonald
ACA President
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Governor Nathan Deal
206 Washington Street
Suite 203, State Capitol
Atlanta, GA 30334
September 16, 2012
Dear Governor Deal:
I am writing on behalf of the Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA) to encourage you to reverse your decision to reduce the budget of the Georgia State Archives.
Established in 1975, the Association of Canadian Archivists is a national not-for-profit organization representing over 600 archivists in Canada. With headquarters in Ottawa, the ACA’s mandate is to provide the archival profession leadership and to facilitate an understanding and appreciation of Canada’s archival heritage.
We were disturbed to learn that, as a result of budget cuts, the Georgia State Archives will be closed to the public after November 1, 2012. Archival records provide evidence documenting the activities of public leaders and protecting the rights of all citizens. Reducing access to archives reduces the public’s ability to hold officials accountable for their actions and would thus undermine a fundamental pillar of democracy. Further, restricting access to the state archives impoverishes Georgia’s heritage. Without access to archives, how can historians and students write their histories, genealogists understand their ancestors, and citizens know their state’s rich past? Indeed, as the International Council of Archives’ Universal Declaration on Archives states, open access to archives enriches our knowledge of human society, promotes democracy, protects citizens’ rights and enhances the quality of life. Surely, you do not wish to be the governor of the only state in the country that will not have a central location where citizens can research and review the historical records of their government and state.
The rights of citizens to access information about Georgian society must not be compromised. We urge you to restore the Georgia State Archives’ budget. Anything less is an abdication of your government’s responsibility to uphold democratic values and to nurture Georgia’s rich collective memory.
Best Regards,
Loryl MacDonald
President
Its a bit like the Railways service being forced to run trains only upon request and specific appointment....how would that go down?
Hmmm so much for "open" government.
Cleary " The employees that will be let go through this process are assets to the state of Georgia and will be missed" are NOT considered assets.