By Christopher B. Daly
Among the unfortunate effects of shutting down the U.S. government is the impact on the “non-essential” workers who run the National Archives, the presidential libraries, the Library of Congress, and other repositories of our national memory. That, in turn, means that a lot of historians, history grad students, writers, and others are sidelined until this blows over.
Even the incomparable Library of Congress digital collections are off-limits. So, a nation that is busy doing a dumb thing is going to start getting dumber.
Here is an article from History News Network detailing some of the disruptions.
And for journalists as well as historians, here’s another downside: the normally glacial processing of Freedom of Information requests has now ground to a halt. No more FOIA disclosures until Congress get back to funding the government.
Sheesh.
