1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire

For several years I worked on a project as a volunteer for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco identifying the locations of 1906 earthquake/fire photographs by Arnold Genthe. Consequently, I developed a deep familiarity with with the many ruined structures and the resources for identifying them. As a Citizen Archivist I thought I'd apply this knowledge to similar photos in the Archives collection. Mostly, this involved adding details. However, sometimes I come across some that are completely inaccurate. What do I do? So far, I've just added corrections about content and location as tags. The most egregious I've found is NAID 531018 which has the description totally wrong. Do I alert someone on staff to correct it? But, this seems so trivial in the scope of your holdings, is there staff that's concerned with this, especially if the correct information is in the tags? Do I add corrections to Comments? Are Comments searchable? Just "searching" for guidance? Thanks.

  • Thank you for your question.  You are welcome to contact the Catalog staff to report any errors you find in a Catalog description - catalog@nara.gov  Please provide the URL or the National Archives Identifier for the record along with the suggested edit.  The reference unit will review the description and take appropriate action. Please note, in some cases the title and description have been provided by the federal agency and may not be able to be changed.

    We recommend that you also add any additional information or corrections that you have in the Comments section, so that other researchers may benefit from you knowledge.

    Sincerely,

    Suzanne

    Community Manager, National Archives Catalog