you're watching merion history tv, all weekend, every weekend, on cspan3. the national archives in washington, d.c., home of the declaration of independence and the u.s. constitution is closed to the public because of the coronavirus pandemic. we talked with the archivist about the pandemic's impact on the archive's work. >> the national archives in washington, d.c., home of the deck la ration of independence and the u.s. instituticonstitut closed to the public due u to the pandemic. we talked to the archivist about the pandemic. >> david is the akooifi archivi

the united states. this pandemic became front and center in early march. at what point did it warrant the shutdown of the national archives and your facilities around the country? >> towards the 23rd of march. >> and what impact has all of this had on visitors and on your bottom line? >> in terms of visitors in our buildings, we're in 42 facilities across the country. no public since that time. >> so on a normal day, how many people would visit here in washington? >> about one million and half a year who come through the rotunda. >> and so has it impacted your financial resources? >> well, we have a shop, museum shop, in the rotunda. underneath the rotunda, and our presidential libraries have

shops, also a, so the gift shops have certainly not been receiving any business. we have a couple of online stores, museum stores, that have been doing business, but not at the level that we have during the regular season. >> what will june, july and august look like? not only here in washington, but also facilities around the country? >> we are in the process of plan ing a gradual reopening across the country. the, as i said, there are 42 a facilities in 17 different states so the conditions in each state need to be factored in as we slowly reopen. for d.c., it will probably be late summer, early fall, before we have people back in the building. in the rotunda. >> we have all learned to work from home using zoom and skype to communicate with our colleagues and employees.

how have you dealt with all of this? as somebody who manages a rather large government enter thety? >> it's been pretty amazing to see and experience communication with my staff across the country. about 3,000 people. to keep them you know, up to date on what's going on and in term of what we know and also to boost their morale as they're stuck at home. as an incredibly impressed with their ability to do much of their job remotely. this has been a good experience, good learning experience for us, as we get serious about a virtual government. this has been a real life experience in trying to figure out how can we best serve our customers in a virtual environment. >> what that that mean, a a a virtual government?

virtual employees? so many working at home and yet try iing to meet demand of the archives? >> the ability for people to work from home, to get the access to the information ta they need in order to answer the questions that people have. all of our work is based on access to records and we have somewhere around 15 billion pieces of paper, for instance, and not all of that is digitized, so getting as much we can digitized is a very important piece of being able to deliver virtually. that's why i said that we're able to do some work remotely, but it can't all be done remotely at this point. >> we are now learning once again about what happened more than a century ago in 1918. a pandemic that i can speak from personal experience, really know a lot about, studying american history. and now, many americans learning more about what happened in part because of the]

pandemic, byou're also adding t that e lesson plan. what's your biggest take away for what happened 100 years ago? >> we have created a great site around the 1918 pandemic, so you can get a lot of information from our records. one of the things that pleases me is that when franklin roosevelt signed legislation to create a national archives, his goal was that we would make the records available so that people could learn from our past and this is you know, a really good opportunity to see how the government dealt with the pandemic in 1918. looking at the photographs and reading some of the original documents, things that impressed me were how similar things were.

the use of face masks, about what should be wearing face p masks. the fact that minorities were more impacted in 1918 just as we're see iing today. those are some of the lessons from the past. >> and the signs of social distancing, covering your mouth when social distancing were going on in 2020. >> exactly. it's a wonderful picture of dr. fauci's ancestor in the government and that we have on the website and he's a dead ringer for dr. fauci himself. just ironic. >> i wonderf why we're having t relearn the lesson and didn't heed the warning. >> that's a great question, a question i ask myself every day.

we have these records, situations in the past. human beings have a short memory. and the opportunity, the responsibility to go back to the past and learn from the past is something that isn't embraced by every decision maker. that we're dealing with. >> i noticed you had a number of n95 masks and donating them to health care workers to needed them. how did this all come about? >> one of our staff members realized that we were sitting on this material. we have conversation labs here in washington, college park and in st. louis with those ppe equipment. masks and gowns and things that are of use in this pandemic environment and that staff member suggested, couldn't we be

donating those. so we worked with our staff in those facilities to identify places in those local to donate. >> you also have the citizens archivist program. what is that about? >> when i became the archivist in 2009, it was, i was appointed by president obama and i read a lot of what he wrote when he first started on the job and on the second day in office, the senior staff and talked to them about what was the beginning of open government, the things, the government doesn't have all the answers and we need to figure out ways to involve the american public in solving this idea. and i took that to heart and started thinking that well how can we engage in helping us do

our work in helping us to improve or access to records. we launched this program with a number of opportunities for the american people to support our work. one of the biggest problems we had now in terms of access to records is that many of our records, a large percentage of them are written in cursive. it isn't taught in schools anymore, so generations of kids now growing up not being able to read our records. so we started this transcription program, which has now been copied by the smithsonian and library of congress, that provides opportunities for people to help us by transcribing thousands of rec d records that we've loaded on to our website. we also have opportunities to help us identify people in photographs.

53 million photographs in the national archives. not all of them have descriptions necessary for really good ak a success, so we have people tagging photographs for us. if they recognize. those are too examples of this program. i can tell you, because of u the pandemic, before march 23rd, think about 10,000 people a week who were helping us in the citizen program. two weeks later, that jumped to 20,000. now we're up to 25,000 a week who are now participating, helping us. improve access to our records. >> to that point, it's someone who helps preserve the documents. at this moment, what documents do you think need to be

preserved so that 100 years from now, others can learn from what we're dealing with now? >> all of the records that are being created as decisions are made at the cdc and in the white house and in all the agencies responsible for leading this effort against the pandemic. all of those records become part of what, in 50 years from now, will be another site like the one wave created in the 1918 pandemic. we're going to be able to see how decisions were made. why they were made. and learn from hopefully, learn from that. that new site. >> i'm curious, how would you assess where we are at this moment? in terms of the pandemic. there's social unrest with the death of george floyd. we're in a presidential election year. how do you look back at 2020 a

few years from now? >> it is the most roller coaster year of my life. a number of earth shattering, world shattering events that have taken place, which just remi reminds you of how important it is to work on these documents. that each one of those needs to be documented. >> in your office, it's very quiet. is this the new norm now for the next two months? >> it's been me and the security guard since march 23rd. virtual and i'm learning a lot about people's pets and their phone collections and things like that. trying to communicate with the staff virtually on a regular basis. so they're starting and planning

to see light at the end of the tunnel. as important as those have been, it makes me nervous about the social distancing aspect of things and keeping my fingers crossed. >> the archivist of the united states. joining us from his office here in washington, d.c. thanks for being part of this american history tv discussion. >> thank you. this is american history tv on cspan3, where each weekend we feature 48 hours of programs exploring our nation's past.

on first ladies influence and image, scholars talk about the influence of first lady, eleanor roosevelt, in response of viewer phone calls and comments. topics include her independent life and causes and the numerous precedents she set and support of president roosevelt's policies. >> good evening, ladies and gentlemen. i'm speaking to you to wanight a very serious moment in our h history. the cabinet is convening and the leaders of congress are meeting with the president. the state department and army and navy officials have been with the president all afternoon. in fact, the japanese ambassador was talking to the president at the very time that japan's air ships were bomb iing our citize

in hawaii and the philippines and sinki o