Susan david ferriero, do you remember why you said yes . I said yes because of the opportunity to participate in and administers and i was serious about, and thought that the National Archives have a role to play in transparency. Susan dr. Skorton, why did you say yes to such a different gig . Dr. Skorton part of the goes back to my dad, who was a nationalist citizen. Were a little corny. He said if you can do something for the country, you should do it. I felt like i had some small part in telling the story of america. I knew that libraries and museums are one of the most trusted kinds of institutions in the u. S. At a time when not every institution is trusted. I thought it would be nice to the sector. Susan i wish the camera had been rolling when you all sat down. How often do you all caps together do you all get together like this . Ms. Hayden we will be doing more of this type of discussion about what we can do together. This is the third time where we have had a chance tour together. It is quite a community. It goes from the large institutions to smaller ones that are still jewels nonetheless. Think you are going to see more of this kind of thing. Susan thank you for doing this with the cspan audience today. I would ask each of you if you could give us capsulization of your history. Ms. Hayden it started with a small collection of books in the house and capital, the Jefferson Building we are in, was a building built and opened in 1897. Thomas jefferson famously gave his collection of Monumental Library for congress. It has grown to one of the largest libraries in the world. Susan point are your responsibilities today . Ms. Hayden the library of congress has 162 million items, including the sheet music i mentioned to abraham lincolns life mask, all types of things. It operates in the u. S. Copyright system. A lot of the materials that built the National Library part of that process. It is still the reference arm for congress. Susan the smithsonian came along next. How did it get started . A man was an admirer of the early American Experience in 1970, and requested he give 200 million of his net worth to the United States. The United States decided to accept that set of something. He wrote that he wanted the institution to be oriented to what he called the increase and diffusion of knowledge. That is what the smithsonian has become. 19 museums and galleries. 215 museums affiliated around the United States, a traveling exhibition service. Our collection is 156 million objects, including 2 million books. Items ranging from biological specimens to the ruby slippers, to the hope diamond. I want to just put another plug in for the library of congress. Not only were all these things mentioned, but the Musical Instrument collection is fabulous here. When i first came, carlas predecessor gave me a tour. It was to die for. You can play one in an inadequate fashion. Susan how did the National Come about . Around 1934. I was convinced it was because of roosevelts personal passion for records. He sent a lot of time selecting the first archivists. Creating what would be the process for managing the records of the government. That has been the mission from the beginning. The creation for the schedules for the executive branch agencies, managing records of congress and supreme court, building staff, and creating the management of government records. Which looks easy from this perspective. He had similar problems with agencies being reluctant to give up their records, the president having to lay down the law about this. It is at this point a collection of 13 million pieces of paper, 43 million autographs, miles of film video. The fastestgrowing collection is five terabytes of electronic records. Susan is it all saved . The federal records asked acts governs the federal branch. Every agency has a records manager. They create record schedules to identify the kind of records and how long they need to be retained for legal purposes. 2 3 of those that are legal value need to be kept forever get transferred to us. Everything that is created in the white houses record. Susan that means that the president ial Library System 13 president ial libraries are part of the National Archives also. Susan we have an incoming president who tweets. Will you be gathering all of his tweets . Will that start january 20 . Mr. Ferriero it starts after the inaugural ceremony, as soon as he is sworn in, the recordkeeping starts. Tweets have nothing new. We have been collecting this president s tweets. Susan very different kinds, though. [laughter] it will be interesting for future generations of researchers. This is another round robin question. Your organizations and their structure is interesting. You were appointed by the president and went through the confirmation process. Who is your boss and how long is your term . Ms. Hayden the congress. It is a 10 year term. The librarian is the only appointee that is a president ial appointment. The other 3200 people that work at the library are government employees, federal employees. There is not an appointment process. When i mention congress, there are appropriations committees that have oversight, and quite a bit of interaction with congress. Susan is there still a joint committee . Mr. Ferriero yes, in both houses. Susan are they active . Ms. Hayden . They are active what has been hard in working in congress is the interest of most of the legislators in history. It was striking during my confirmation process, seen how much the legislators knew about history and wanted to cement their place in history. Susan what is your operating budget . How much of that is federally subsidized . Ms. Hayden just about all of it. 632 million. The smithsonian has done a wonderful job of working with patriotic philanthropy. The library has been relatively new to that. The fact that we are in this room was a gift of mrs. Coolidge with these stradivarius instruments. Susan first Lady Coolidge . Ms. Hayden no. Susan i dont know how far back the history went. To whom do you report . Dr. Skorton the president. We have oversight committees in both the house and senate. Our main communication is with the white house. Susan what is your operating budget . Is it all federally funded . Dr. Skorton about 450 million. Each of the president ial libraries, as well as the flagship National Archives have private foundations that supplement that. Susan your government structure is interesting. There is a board of regents. There is a chief justice, Vice President , and leaders of congress serve on it. Dr. Skorton you are stealing my thunder. It is an interesting governing system. 9 are private citizens. There are eight public service. 6 sitting members of congress. Not necessarily leaders, but three from the house and three from the senate. The chancellor of the smithsonian is the chief justice. I report to the board. I am not a political appointee or a federal employee. The smithsonian is something called a trust instrumentality. 2 3 are federal employees, 1 3 are not. We have 6000 volunteers onsite. You can see them when you come to the library and archives. We have another 6000 or so digital volunteers from the far. It is an interesting governing process, and it works well. Each Resource Center has an Advisory Board which is delegated certain aspects of functioning. The actual governance is done by this 17 person border regions. Susan are they active . Dr. Skorton very active. We have a subset of the board that meets my telephone every month. They are quite active. Susan talking about funding, how important has private philanthropy been to what you want to get done . Ms. Hayden before you answer to make one provision. The donor is staring at me. [laughter] i think even the candles are flickering a little that. I would be remiss if i didnt mention her philanthropy. You do understand. [laughter] dr. Skorton i think that the Publicprivate Partnership has been beneficial. Lots of things that the public can afford, and many want to the budget is 1. 4 billion. The fluid. 2 comes from federal appropriations. The rest comes from a combination of retail and shopping, imax theaters, cafes and other things. We have been fortunate in getting generous philanthropy. We have already passed the 1. 5 billion mark. Susan i know that you are dealing with so many donors, you dont want to single out one. It is unusual in a generation to have a private philanthropist with pockets as deep as his have been. Can you talk about his role, and what kind of editorial control does one seek . Do you get to keep your independence . Mr. Ferriero that is the best thing about david. There is no pressure. He does not control where the resources are used. He is a passionate collector, and he wants his collection in the public. He wants to place them where people will see and appreciate them. He bought ross perots copy of the magna carta. Just months before i arrived on the scene, he was the first person to welcome me to washington. He graduated from two university. He checked with the president to make sure that i was a credible person. He has been incredibly supportive. But never pressure in terms of how we display or make decisions for us. Susan what has a simple donor like that made to the smithsonian . Mr. Ferriero my colleagues can agree that philanthropic fundraising is a bit of a dance. You need capacity and a passion for something or other. You want to match them up with priorities. One thing about David Rubenstein is that he has a broad range of things he is interested in. He is a voracious reader of history. When you see him do an interview, he has no notes and manages to take it from memory. He has been a terrific partner. He wants to do what the institution finds to be a high priority. To give him credit for beyond the three of us sitting here, he does the same for the American People through monuments and memorials. He is helping with the elevator in the washington monument, doing something for the lincoln memorial. He truly wants to share his passion and wealth these acquisitions with the American People. Ms. Hayden he credits Enoch Pratt Library in baltimore for his love of reading. There was a limit of 12 books in the and have to wait for a week. This year at the National Book festival, he was there meeting people from all walks of life. He sponsored literacy awards for nonprofit organizations encouraging young people to learn to read. The power literacy. He has a deep sense of responsibility for funding these institutions. It is not his own personal feeling. He hosted a meeting at the giving pledge. Three of us the opportunity to present our institutions to these numbers. Susan is private philanthropy a uniquely american concept . Mr. Ferriero unique is a word you want to use sparingly. It may not be unique, but it is much more of the american ethos than anywhere i have visited. There are generous people everywhere. It has been a big part of america. I can say with authority that the smithsonian would not be what it is without the Publicprivate Partnership. Congress has been generous with us. We have had generous support. Without the excellence we can get from philanthropy, we could not do the things that we do. Susan each of you is charged with conserving the nation legacy. Do you ever compete for things he wants to conserve . Mr. Ferriero i have enough in my custody now that i would be fighting with two for more. I think there is lots of open territory to be working on preservation. We have had similar materials in terms of formats. We have had a serious preservation needs. We have talented staff working for each of us in preservation units. We have some real opportunities for collaborative work. Far from competition, the folks we are so lucky to have as trusted colleagues worked together already in preservation. They form a network in washington and beyond of experts in some complicated areas that involve chemistry and physics, some things that are more can to art than science. You cant handle these things without the kind of corporation. We gain and learn a lot from working with your colleagues. Susan the task of digitization seems mindboggling. The library of congress was behind the curb on digitization. How are you approaching it . Ms. Hayden my predecessor started a wonderful digitization effort in the early 1990s. Unfortunately that technology caught up with the effort. We are looking at combining the preservation and conservation efforts that relate to digitization with whatever collections might be useful for, k12 education, as well as actually beings popular. There is a big push to make sure that we are digitizing things that can be useful more rapidly. Susan how about your task . Mr. Ferriero this is been an enormous. Anyone interested in Family History ancestry. Com. Most of the content comes from the archives. We have done a fair amount of digitization inhouse ourselves. It is a massive project. We are in an environment where the records are created electronically. Susan making more things transparent on an expedited schedule. Can you talk about the mission and philosophy behind your charge . Mr. Ferriero part of the open Government Initiative was the creation of a national declassification center. Massive amounts of material that are classified and added onto the part of the administration. A president ial executive order outlining criteria by which material could both remain classified. Mandates review about 4 million pages of classified material going back to world war i with a threeyear deadline. We have wet, reviewed, and 85 has been released. We will expedite the review of materials so we dont get into huge backlog situations. Susan when you are at the point you want to be, what will be the result to society . We have a bold goal to digitize anything the collection so that anyone can have access to this material at their fingertips. The reason the National Archives was created so that the American Public could hold government accountable for his actions. You can do that from home. Susan the smithsonian has a robust web presence. How much of that is credited to the Museum Experience and how are you making that available to people . Dr. Skorton we spent time digitizing cardiac images and analyzing them. It was going to be hard to impress me coming into the smithsonian. I have been very impressed with the digitization work. It is a big challenge to know how much to digitize in what order. At any one time with our collection, only a tiny fraction can be on public display. There is a big impetus from inside the smithsonian and outside to make it more accessible. Our visitor numbers are tiny compared with the rest of the world. We feel a strong motivation to make it accessible. We have over 140 million biological special mens related to natural history. I doubt we we will ever digitize those things. In our asian art galleries, we have digitized the entire collection. Even though only a fraction is on display, today you can look at anything in the collection because of the digitization effort. One area is three dimensional digitization. We incorporated inside the apollo 11 capsule, 3d digitization. I take no credit for this. The smithsonian was doing great work. They are leaving the field with some objects nationally. Susan what technologies are you excited about . Ms. Hayden 3d, also tactile experiences. All of those types of things that make the experience, life. I am excited about social media and the opportunities we exploited to engage the public. We have 13 billion pieces of paper. A large percentage of them in script and cursive. We have generations of school kids who cant read our records. We have loaded a thousands of documents and have people transcribing for us. The use of social media excites me. Ms. Hayden in the short time i have been here, the response has been tremendous in terms of twitter. I tweet one or two things a day. It has been growing. Susan what technology are you most excited about . Virtual reality is a Computer Programmer developing a artificial world. You can walk into a structure. People are beginning to commercialize it by putting a headset on. That complete experience is made up by the programmer. Augmented reality in which there is a real object. Lets say this attractive cspan mug. [laughter] the Computer Programmer could develop a reality around the mug. The day this one was produced i know each one is lovingly written by hand that would be the way to put it in context. We have a group of High School Students who helped us put together. I have been asking them, what do you think the next technologies will be . They tell me two things. To a person, they want to make sure we preserve the collections. I was surprised to hear them say that. They want us to use augmented reality to put the object in context. Susan we are talking at a time when reports of russian hacking are in the news. How concerned are you about hackers in your collection . Very concerned. Very. As i said, the shift from paper to electronic recordkeeping is underway. We have an all electronic archive in the near future. The security of the content is something that i am very concerned about. Not only for the reasons of our mission, but as an employer. About the records of our employees. All of us here have suffered in greater or lesser degree because of the hacking in the office of personnel management. Any operation has to expend serious effort thinking about Cyber Security and auditing those efforts. My personal opinion is that nothing is secure. Susan you have priceless collections. The library of congress has had incidents in the past few years. How concerned are you about theft . Constant vigilance. I have been in this business long enough to know that the balance between access and protection is real. A large percentage of the problem is insider theft. Raising awareness about keeping and eye on each other. Susan is that discouraging . Very discouraging. We had an incident where a longtime staff member was caught stealing film from the National Archives. The damage that it does to the staff is real. Ms. Hayden that is one of the reasons i make sure i follow all the security protocol. When i come in, i open all of my bags. On the way out, i do it. I want that to be the culture, that even the librarian is subject to the security measures. I do the same thing with my badge and belts. The balance between security and access is critical. It is about the safety of the millions who enter. We try hard to hit the right balance. I thought it was great coming into the library. There were metal detectors and scanners. People were polite. Even on quite a chilly day by washington standards. In my home state of wisconsin or illinois, they might consider us to be a bit wimpy. Ms. Hayden we were close with the u. S. Capitol police. They are very cognizant. We had an Appreciation Day for them. We showed them how much we appreciated them. Susan how many visitors does the library get . Ms. Hayden almost 2 million. In washington, 1. 5 million. Susan is july 4 the big day . We own july 4. [laughter] we have a wonderful ceremony reading of the declaration of independence. Susan how many visitors to the smithsonian get . We get over 20 million visitors, but that is because all of our locations. It is discouraging when a panda does something, it is national headlines, but when i do something, nobody listens. [laughter] susan maybe we need a camera in your office. The purviews of these institutions is mandated. Many say, i want to be preserved in the smithsonian. How do you make that decision . There are historians hired to have the professional knowledge to decide what is of lasting value and what is necessary to make the collection more complete. A lot of people happily offer things from their lives. The National Museum of African American history and culture opened to five months ago. 37,000 item collection. Many times the person said, this is something we have had in our attic or coffee table. If you are telling the story of africanamericans, maybe will want to have this. It is a dance between something that somebody knows about and what fits into the overall scheme of our collection. It is an art more than a science. Susan single most amazing thing in your collection . Ms. Hayden that is tough. I will bring up my dad. We moved from milwaukee to los angeles after the dodgers moved to brooklyn. Dad thought that was the greatest thing. When i was shown the backroom of the museum of natural history, it brought tears to my eyes to see sandy koufaxs mitt. It meant a lot to me to see that. Ms. Hayden it is a wonderful position i have not found yet. The contents of abraham lincolns pockets. I am still looking for a treasure. The library at the time discovered a safe. The story goes that no one knew the combination, so they extricated someone from prison that was known to the handy. When they opened the safe, it was a small box that had been given to the library of congress by abraham lincolns granddaughter. The note is the there would be some spectacles. It resonated with me. There is only one cemetery in springfield. I will find Something Else i am sure. Every day a discovery knocks my socks off. If i had to choose one, id choose 3. [laughter] the charter of freedom, constitution, and bill of rights. They are with us today because of that rescue. I have a favorite in each of their collections. If my colleagues really cared about me, they would loan me in my office. A beautiful glass root, and the bill of rights. Its a small thing. Ms. Hayden in your kitchen. I visit that regularly. Susan we are talking on bill of rights day. Our time is going quickly. I am going to go over a few minutes. Telling the american story when it is not always pretty. We have talked about values we preserve. History has not been pretty. I wonder how you wrestle with that aspect. The mission has been to provide and take care of the records of the country without judgment to good or bad stories. We collect everything so that the people can hold government accountable, whether they were good or bad decisions, letting future generations make the decision whether it was right or not. Any of our libraries have created decisions in terms, where they allow schoolchildren access to the records of decision made by that administration. Members of the cabinet has access to the same documents. Susan with living president s, is that task more difficult . I am proud that has been implemented at the george bush library. The same kind of info opportunities are available for students. Susan the library of congress. Ms. Hayden the veterans history project. You have history of veterans and sometimes that history is not told. Iconic figures like the rosa parks collection, and her letters to her mother, where she talks about how she felt so worthless and depressed. She worried that telling the truth about her story, that it would disillusion people if they knew that she had these feelings. Dr. Skorton i have great confidence and faith in the American People. I think they deserve to know the whole story. We also strive to do that in letting history speak for itself. Virtually any area in the smithsonian tells stories that are uplifting and stories that are not our proudest moment, and my point of view is that the American People have the right. My confidence is that they will want to know the whole story. I think that is true of our elected leaders as well. They are people who want to know what is going on and want us to hang onto it. They can come to us with information that they can count on face value. Susan since you have to work on future planning, lets closed by having you tell your audience what are institutions will look like 10 years from now. Dr. Skorton the smithsonian will be a combination of a collection to objects, works of art, authentic material, and newer technologies. I think we will do a better job of telling the story of different people in america whose stories have not been told enough. People coming in the days to come will feel more engaged in what they see. Susan he will be finishing your first term. Ms. Hayden the institution will be at your fingertips. It will be a place where you can have the experience of looking at the original documents, as well as having all types of experiences with whatever items we have. You can have access to the library of Congress Wherever you are. Massive amounts of digitization will allow us to do a better job of connecting the 3 institutions in terms of user experience. It will be not just one of us, but a suite of information. We will be much more electronic and collaborative. Susan beyond your institutions . All of us will be interconnected. This has been a quick 50 minutes. Thank you very much. I would like to invite you to the future again. Thank you for the time you have given us today
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.