The government’s top archivist, David Ferriero announced today the Anchorage branch of the National Archives will close this year.
Its collection will be shipped to Seattle, where he says it will be digitized and made available to historians and researchers on the Internet.
The closure of the Third Avenue facility, along with consolidations in Philadelphia and Fort Worth, are projected to save more than $1 million a year.
The National Archives also owns a 9-acre lot in Midtown Anchorage, purchased a decade ago with the sponsorship of then-Sen. Ted Stevens. Sen.
Lisa Murkowski suggested today Archives should use money from the sale of that land to more quickly put the Alaska collection online. She also asked the national archivist to consider affiliating with an Alaska library so the documents could stay in-state.
Liz Ruskin is the Washington, D.C., correspondent at Alaska Public Media. Reach her atlruskin@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Lizhere.
