Dude, I got like 500 caps from Abe Washington for that crap. I now have more stimpacks than I'll ever use.

To be fair, any system that relies upon fallible humans is likely the fail and the alternative is to lock everything up, but even then who do you trust to make sure everything is safe?

hudef: From TFA: "Some were stolen by researchers or Archives employees. Others simply disappeared without a trace."

That statement is profoundly moronic.

Or moronically profound.

Antidamascus: Damn Fallout 3 jokes already done. Damn it!

And I thought "Let me know if they notice Lincoln's Repeater is missing" was going to be too obscure!

Check Sandy Berger....again

From what I can gather from the references being made here, the Archive's items were stolen by Sandy Berger, a character from National Treasure, who enjoys playing Fallout 3.

hudef: From TFA: "Some were stolen by researchers or Archives employees. Others simply disappeared without a trace."

That statement is profoundly moronic.

Indeed. What happened, they dissolved?

A friend of mine was an archivist at the University of Texas. The University was given charge of David O. Selznick's personal effects, to inventory and manage for his estate.

In the first six months they had possession they lost something like 25% of the collection (they guessed) from employees walking off with stuff in boxes because none of the stuff was secured or inventoried correctly. They lost things like original production art for Scarlett O'Hara's wardrobe, a bunch of King Kong miniatures, handwritten annotated script reviews of movies like A Tale of Two Cities, etc.

What a frickin' nightmare.

H27790: No Carmen Sandiego reference? I'm dismayed.

Came here for just that purpose

First, why is the national archive in possession of anything that is classified or in any other way "sensitive"?

Second, why is security so lax that employees have been known to just "walk away with things"? If this was 20+ years ago, ok, but there's no excuse for it in recent history.

Out of 9 billion documents, 170 are missing. Since when is a 99.9999981% success rate considered a failure?

I think the National Archives deserves a .

Obscene_CNN: I would still like to know where JFKs brain is and how they lost that.

I ate it.

The Bush/Cheney administration robbed us blind every other way for eight years, so why not our national treasures? I bet if you looked into the private studies of a few of their biggest donors, you'd turn up the few missing artifacts, and probably a few more we didn't know are missing.

When I was young I heard that the Library of Congress had one of every book and pamphlet ever published in the USA.I loved books and that made me very happy.

Have since learned that the Library of Congress has been stripped of all rare and worthwhile books by Congressmen and Women .While it is called the Library of Congress- it wasn't theirs to steal from.

Rant complete -please return to whatever you were farking doing...

Most likely time travelers from the future grabbing historic artifacts for their ancient history museum.

EngineerBob: When I was young I heard that the Library of Congress had one of every book and pamphlet ever published in the USA.I loved books and that made me very happy.

Have since learned that the Library of Congress has been stripped of all rare and worthwhile books by Congressmen and Women .While it is called the Library of Congress- it wasn't theirs to steal from.

Rant complete -please return to whatever you were farking doing...

And those sons of biatches use taxpayer money to cover the late fees.

And if you know where they stashed the Ark of the Covenant, a swashbuckling archaeologist would like a word with you.



/hot like a stolen antiquity

WarpZone: Most likely time travelers from the future grabbing historic artifacts for their ancient history museum.

So, are there nerd fights between the time traveling archivists in the 30th and 35th millenniums?

foxtrot470: Out of 9 billion documents, 170 are missing. Since when is a 99.9999981% success rate considered a failure?

I think the National Archives deserves a .

170 that they know about. Who knows how many are missing that they don't know about?

Obscene_CNN: I would still like to know where JFKs brain is and how they lost that.

JFK himself lost it long before he became president. When he was shot, the doctors found nothing in his skull but some colorful gumballs and cheap plastic prizes. The medical examiner who made the best guess at how many gumballs were in there won a really cool skateboard.

We have top men working on them now.

Top. Men.

DarthBrooks: A friend of mine was an archivist at the University of Texas. The University was given charge of David O. Selznick's personal effects, to inventory and manage for his estate.

In the first six months they had possession they lost something like 25% of the collection (they guessed) from employees walking off with stuff in boxes because none of the stuff was secured or inventoried correctly. They lost things like original production art for Scarlett O'Hara's wardrobe, a bunch of King Kong miniatures, handwritten annotated script reviews of movies like A Tale of Two Cities, etc.

What a frickin' nightmare.

Don't hold me to this, but I'm pretty sure some major college archive in texas, UT might be it, had some major problems - they've collected and bought private collections without much regard for "Why" they collect them. Most Archives keep to a set of mission/vision statements that keeps what they are there for in check - for instance, a college archive might be there for the students, to collect college history, and for local history. Though cool, the collection of a writer from the other side of the country isn't necessarily good in a texas archive. I remember my main archives professor, and my old boss, really got angry at this.

If the film maker was a UT grad, that's one thing, buying it "Because it's cool", or "has cultural value", ect, is off. And that kind of error happens when the collection has no place in an archive.

errrrrrr.....which moon photos, Lincoln's Civil War telegrams, several presidential pardons and a hard drive with classified information???

Gyrfalcon: foxtrot470: Out of 9 billion documents, 170 are missing. Since when is a 99.9999981% success rate considered a failure?

I think the National Archives deserves a .

170 that they know about. Who knows how many are missing that they don't know about?

Every archive has things that get misplaced.



That's a standard Archival box. Inside, anywhere from 10 to 40 acid-free folders, with documents, magazines, newspapers, books, anything you can think of.

A small archive or library rare papers collection can have dozens to hundreds of these. A large one, like what I worked at Brooklyn College, can have thousands (hell, we had one collection, the Alan Dershowitz collection, which had over 800 by itself, and since he's still alive and sending stuff, that collection isn't finished growing). The NARA? If it's less then 500,000 i'd be shocked. A million would not boggle me.

Shyte happens. It's not forgivable, but it isn't something to be shocked about. It's probable.

OK which farker bought the documents on Ebay???

I work in the research area of National Archives II in College Park.

Per shelf unit, they're stacked 8 wide and 7 high, plus there are 36-42 per row, and as many as 120 rows per each of the 27 stack areas.

I see that as 5 to 7 million items, not all of which are in boxes (such as deck logs, etc.)

BTW I wasn't earnestly suggesting only 170 are missing, only that no one takes time to realize how many documents have NOT gone missing. Which is almost all of them.

/ here come the skeptics

FTA: "Some were stolen by researchers or Archives employees. Others simply disappeared without a trace Others simply were stolen by researchers or Archives employees."

i worked for the canadian national archives for a while
and i could have taken literally anything from there if i wanted

it was my job to get the archives and bring them up for the archivists/public.

nobody ever checked or inspected me.

Didn't ever take anything though...too much respect for that kinda stuff.

/coolest modern archive i stumbled across was Marshall McLuhan's daily planner, where flipping through i found three days circled off to go to New York and shoot Woody Allen's Annie Hall.

I cant wait for govt run healthcare so they can loose my medical records like this. On the bright side maybee they will loose my bills as well.

essucht: WarpZone: Most likely time travelers from the future grabbing historic artifacts for their ancient history museum.

So, are there nerd fights between the time traveling archivists in the 30th and 35th millenniums?

I could sell that as a screenplay, I think.

Thakh: Or for a better profit, this guy:

I came for the Fallout 3 jokes, and left happy.

Zimmy: Have they tried contacting Nicholas Cage? He may notice a pattern.

He's got the church pew leg it's all stashed in.