that fall. >> learn more about the global significance of the declaration of independence saturday at 10:00 a.m. eastern, 7:00 a.m. pacific. explore our nation's past year on american history tv. the national archives in washington, d.c., home of the declaration of independence and the u.s. constitution, is close to the public because of the coronavirus pandemic. we talked with the archivist of the united states about the pandemic's impact on the archive's work. >> 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 of the united states about the pandemic's impact on the archive's work. >> david is the ar cchivist of e

united states joining us today. this pandemic became front and center in early march. >> towards the end of march, around the 23rd of march. >> and what impact has all of this had on visitors and on your bottom line? >> in terms of visitors, there have been no public in our buildings. we're in 42 facilities across the country and no public since that time. >> so on a normal day, how many people would visit the national archives here in washington? >> it's about a million and a half a year come through the rotunda to see the charters of freedom. >> and so has it impacted your financial resources? >> well, we have a shop in our museum rotunda -- underneath the rotunda and our presidential libraries have shops also. 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 certainly not at the level that we have during the regular season. >> now that we're moving into the summer months, what will june, july and august look like, not only here in washington, but also at your facilities around the country? >> we are in the process of planning reopening -- a gradual reopening across the country. we have 42 facilities in 17 different states. so the conditions in state need to be factored in as we slowly reopen. for d.c., it will probably be late summer, early fall to slowly add people back into the building, into 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 largest government entity? >> 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 in terms of what we know and also to boost their moral as they're stuck at home. i've been incredibly impressed with their ability to do much of their job remotely. it's 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. >> from your standpoint, what does that mean, a virtual government, virtual employees,

so many working from home, and yet trying to meet the demands of the archives? >> the ability for people to work from home, to have access to the information that 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. getting as much as we can digitized. it's a very important piece of being able to deliver virtually. that's why i said 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, didn't really know a lot about studying american history. now many americans learning more about what happened in part because of the book on the pandemic. but you're adding to that lesson

plan of 1918. what's available on the website and what is your biggest takeaway from 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, you know, pleases me is that when franklin roosevelt signed legislation to create the national archives, his goal was that we would make the records available so that people could learn from our past. and this is 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, for instance, and the conversation about who should be wearing face

masks, the fact that minorities were more impacted during 1918, just as we're seeing today. those are some of the kind of lessons from the past. >> and those signs of social distancing and covering your mouth when you're sneezing, which we're dealing with today in 2020. >> exactly, the same thing. exactly. >> why are -- >> there'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, which is ironic. >> but i'm wondering why we have to re-learn the lessons, why we didn't heed the warning? >> that's a very good question. it's a question i ask myself every day. we have these records. we have been through many of these situations in the past.

people have a short memory. 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. >> david, i know that you had a number of n-95 masks and donating them to health care workers who needed them. how did this all come about? >> one of our staff members who realized that we were sitting on this material, we have conservation labs here in washington in college park and st. louis. with those ppe equipment, masks and gowns and things that are of use in this pandemic environment, and staff members who suggested couldn't we be

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

improve access to records. so we launched the program with a number of opportunities for the american people to support our work. one of the biggest problems that we have now in terms of access to records is that many of our records, a large percentage of our records are written in cursive which isn't taught in schools anymore. generations of kids that are now growing up not being able to read our records. so we started a transcription program that provides opportunities for people to help us by transcribing thousands of records that we've loaded onto our website. we also have opportunities for people to help us identify people in photographs. we have 43 million photographs in the national archives.

not all of them have the descriptions necessary. so we have people tagging photographs for us, people -- if they recognize people in the pl. those are two kpaexamples of th program. i can tell you because of the pandemic, before march 23rd we had about 10,000 people a week helping us in this program. two weeks later we were up to 20,000 and now we're up to 25,000 a week who are now participating to improve access to our records. >> what about this moment, what are you looking at, what

documents do you think need to be preserved so that 100 years from now others can learn from what we're dealing with right now? >> all of those records that are being created as decisions are made in the cdc and in the white house and 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 we created for the 1918 pandemic where we'll be able to see how decisions were made, why they were made and learn from, hopefully learn lessons from that. >> i'm curious, how would you assess where we are at this moment in terms of the pandemic? certainly there is social unrest with the death of george floyd. we're in the middle of 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 just reminds me how important it is the work that we do here to document. >> you are in your office. it's very quiet there. is this the new norm for the next months? >> it's been me and the security guards since march 23rd. all the meetings that we have are virtual. i'm learning a lot about people's pets and their book collections and things like that. i try to communicate with the staff virtually on a regular

basis. we're starting in our planning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. makes me nervous to see as important as those marches have been, it makes me nervous about the social distancing aspect of things and keeping my fingers crossed. >> thanks for being part of this american history tv discussion. >> thanks.

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public service and brought to you today by your television provider. next, oral history interview with esther terry who talks about participating in the 1960 lunch counter sit-in protests while the student had been in college in greensboro, north carolina. she served as president of bennett college in 2012 and 2013. this interview is part of an oral history project on the civil rights movement initiated by congress in 2009, conducted by the smithsonian national museum of african-american history and culture, the library of congress and the southern oral history program at the university of north carolina chappech chapel hill. dr. terry, i think i know that your parents drove you to the college here in