UpFront with NGS: Let's Celebrate Sunshine Week (12-18 March 2017)

14 March 2017

Let's Celebrate Sunshine Week (12-18 March 2017)

Let's Celebrate Sunshine Week (12-18 March 2017)

Sunshine Week is “the annual nationwide celebration of access to public information and what it means for you and your community.”

As genealogists and family historians access to public records and “freedom of information” are critical to our success in documenting the lives of interest to us. Since many of the records that interest us are created by government entities, open government is invaluable.

Unfortunately, open access is often sought, as it should be, about malfeasance by those responsible for managing programs or providing services. One can also use open access though to learn about more mundane.

And, threats to records access continue.

This reminds us that access to information is not a given and that access we have now may disappear in the future.

Rejoice in the public information and records that you do have access to and also help ensure that such access continues into the future.

Yesterday, there was a virtual program held by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Sunshine Week 2017 at the National Archives! Missed the program? No worries, it is archived on the NARA YouTube Channel.

Additionally, NARA has set a Sunshine Week Transcription Challenge! Read about it and help make records ore discoverable by transcribing FOIA and Special Access and recently declassified records.

How do you celebrate Sunshine Week?

Editor’s Note: Related posts-- National Freedom of Information Coalition (2012) & Should photographing public records be FREE? (2014) & NARA Open Government Plan (2014) & It's Sunshine Week -- Is the Sun Shining Brightly on an "Open Government" near you? (2016)

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