Guide to NARA Collection
Social Security Textual Records in NARA II
Foreword to the NARA Guide
In
1969, the first SSA Historian, Abe Bortz, published a ground-breaking
book entitled "Social Security Sources in Federal Records,
1934-1950." This was the first in-depth guide to the contents
of the Social Security records held by the National Archives. In
1976, Debra L. Newman compiled for NARA their "preliminary
inventory" of Social Security's records, under the title "Preliminary
Inventory of the Records of the Social Security Administration,"
and known in short as PI-183. These two documents remain the only
systematic efforts to inventory the Social Security-related records
at NARA.
The records of the Social Security Administration (and its predecessor
organizations) are contained mainly in what NARA calls "Record
Group 47" (RG-47). Both the Bortz guide and the Newman compilation
sought to serve as "finding aids" to assist researchers
in locating material in the vast collection of documents which is
RG-47. Not only did the Bortz guide provide a list of the RG-47
holdings, it provided descriptions for many of the boxes and folders
in the collection. A similar, less-detailed and less-comprehensive,
set of descriptions were also included in PI-183.
For many years, these two documents served as the key research aids
for scholars. In recent years, however, both guides have become
less and less accurate, to the point where they are no longer of
much practical use as finding aids for RG-47. This happened for
several, unavoidable, reasons. In 1994 NARA moved from its earlier
Washington, D.C. location to a new facility in suburban College
Park, Maryland (known as NARA II). Coincident with this move, NARA
reorganized its collections, meaning that materials were no longer
in the same locations as they had been at the time the earlier works
were written. Also, material that had been in large Records Boxes
at the time of the earlier surveys had subsequently been refoldered
in smaller Archives Boxes, throwing the numbering scheme off for
these boxes. Thousands of boxes of new material have also been accessioned
to NARA since Bortz and Newman wrote their guides.
At SSA we have received numerous requests to update these documents,
especially the Bortz guide since it was an SSA publication. The
suggestion that we update Abe Bortz's classic guide to NARA's Social
Security archives has been made most persistently by Professor Edward
Berkowitz, of the Department of History at George Washington University.
Shortly after I assumed the position of SSA Historian in early 1995,
Professor Berkowitz approached me and generously offered his advice
and counsel on how we might reinvigorate the history program at
SSA. His first suggestion was an update to the Bortz guide. Although
I never doubted the sagacity of his suggestion, it has taken us
some time to get around to turning his counsel into a viable project.
We are happy to be able to finally produce the updated guide to
NARA's Social Security records which Professor Berkowitz and others
have long sought.
This project finally became feasible due to the availability of
Ms. Kristen Taynor--of the Department of History at the University
of Maryland, Baltimore County--to work on this project. During the
summer of 2003 Ms. Taynor completed an internship here at SSA as
part of her coursework for a graduate degree in public history.
Her internship project was to spent the summer at NARA producing
an updated inventory of RG-47. The size and scope of this effort
seemed daunting, if not overwhelming, at first. The Social Security
collection consists of over 5,000 boxes of textual materials. But
thanks to Kristen's persistence, her intellectual skills, and her
willingness to work hard, she was able to complete what seemed (to
me at least) almost an impossible task.
This
project was facilitated by Tab Lewis, the Archivist for RG-47 at
the National Archives, who tutored us in the usage of NARA's finding
aids and in the records process. It was also aided importantly by
Ann Cummings, who is the Branch Chief at NARA with oversight of
this area. Ann arranged our access and for the various forms of
logistical support needed to carry out this work. We could not have
done this work without the help of Tab and Ann. We wish to express
our gratitude to both of them for their assistance on all fronts.
We hope this newly updated, expanded, and more comprehensive guide
to RG-47 will again serve as a useful finding aid for scholars interested
in the rich history of Social Security.
LARRY DEWITT
SSA Historian
AUGUST 2003