NMI material from presidential libraries available

A large collection of over 11,000 pages of documents pertaining to the post-World War II political history of the Northern Mariana Islands is now available in fully searchable electronic format, thanks to a recently completed project supported by the NMI Council for the Humanities

The project, directed by the husband-and-wife team of Howard Willens and Deanne Siemer, involved identifying and copying memoranda, letters, notes, reports, and other materials relating to the Northern Mariana Islands and Micronesia that were among the archival collections of 10 presidential libraries, from Harry Truman to Bill Clinton.

During their 18 months of work, Willens and Siemer personally visited each library and also reviewed the Nixon Presidential papers still being held in a special vault at the National Archives. They traveled to Missouri, Kansas, Massachusetts, Texas, California, Michigan, Georgia, and Arkansas where they located and copied pertinent documents and other materials. All of these materials were scanned into digital format, organized chronologically, and given file labels with the date and author’s name to make them easy to use. The files were placed on fully searchable CDs.

The two CD set, entitled From the White House: Documents on the Northern Mariana Islands and Micronesia: 1945-1995, is packaged in a handy plastic case that also contains a booklet that provides biographical sketches of the Presidents, summaries of the major Marianas-related issues that confronted their administrations, and descriptions of particularly significant documents as a finding aid in using the collection.

This project was supported by a $15,949 Humanities Council grant awarded to Willens and Siemer in 2004. It is a part of the council’s ongoing efforts to make important collections of primary historical documents readily available for public use. The grant includes three public lectures on the materials collected from these libraries. The first lecture, on the Truman Administration, was presented by Willens last year. The remaining two lectures, on the Kennedy Administration’s actions with respect to the Marianas, and the Nixon Administration’s decisions that shaped the Commonwealth, will be presented on Thursday, Sept. 29, and Thursday, Oct. 6, at 6 pm at the Visitor’s Center, American Memorial Park. (PR)