help fight the NHPRC/NARA FY06 budget cuts NOW

the federal government is endangering your genealogy research again, and you really should act...soon!

for further information about the 2006 budget and how it will affect genealogy and historical research, please see this web page: NHPRC/NARA FY06 Budget


if you're hestating, think about whether or not you did enough to protest the current law which overly restricts distribution of vital records and hampers your genealogy research...

i've copied an e-mail call to action which begins to spell out what is happening and where you can go to read more and to begin to act:

----- Original Message -----From: "Haston Magnuson"


The following e-mail is of great concern to any genealogists who use archives. Please read, sign the petition, then send this to any other Rootsweb or genealogy lists you're on.


The President's budget recommendations for Fiscal Year 2006 slash or eliminate more than 150 federal programs. In that budget, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) has been targeted to receive NO funding. This includes no funds for the grants program and no funds for staffing to support the NHPRC programs. It effectively eliminates NHPRC.

The Council of State Historical Records Coordinators, the Society of American Archivists, and the National Association for Government Archivists and Records Administrators are working collaboratively to address this threat to NHPRC and NARA. Archivists across the U.S. are rallying to save NHPRC while also ensuring that NARA has sufficient funding to sustain its current programs and continue to advance in areas that benefit all archival repositories and every citizen of the United States.

As part of our efforts to continue to express to Congress interest in restoration of funding for NHPRC, we have created an online petition. Please consider signing this petition, and please forward it to any listservs, e-mail groups, or organizations and people you feel would be interested in helping with this effort. It is a quick and easy way for many people to assist. The petition will be forwarded to the House Appropriations Committee and Subcommittee on Treasury, Transportation, HUD and the Judiciary in late May. The petition can be access at:

_www.savearchives.org_ (http://www.savearchives.org/)

Click on the "petition" button.

If you have not received a previous action alert on this issue, we encourage you to also write a letter to your members of Congress. For information on writing letters of support, see any of the following websites:

www.savearchives.org_ (http://www.savearchives.org/)

www.coshrc.org_ (http://www.coshrc.org/)

www.archivists.org_ (http://www.archivists.org/)

Thanks for your efforts to save this important program for archives!

Members of the NHPRC Joint Advocacy Task Force Council of State Historical Records Coordinators: David Carmicheal, Sandra Clark, Kathleen Roe

Society of American Archivists: Nancy Beaumont, Peter Gottlieb, Rand Jimerson, Joan Krizack, Richard Pearce-Moses

National Association of Government Archivists and Records Administrators: Timothy Slavin