In 2002, the City Council established the Archival Review Board. The five-member board was directed to “…render annually to the mayor a report reviewing the archival processing of any city papers.” Authored by Municipal Archives Director Sylvia Kollar, the recently published Archival Review Board FY 2022 Report chronicles the achievements of the City’s archival program during Fiscal Year 2022.

Highlights of the Report:

The 2022 Archival Review Board highlights several important accomplishments during the reporting period. On October 25, 2021, Commissioner PaulineToole and Industry City CEO Andrew Kimball presided over a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open the new Municipal Archives storage and research facility at Industry City. The state-of-the-art storage and research facility will ensure preservation of the City’s heritage for generations to come.

In March 2022 the Municipal Archives launched the Historical Vital Records of NYC platform on the Department of Records and Information Services website. The Archives’ vital records collection is one of the largest in the country. The Archives began digitization of 13.3 million birth, death and marriage records in the collection in 2013. The Historical Vital Records site provides free online public access to more than nine million high-quality copies of birth, death and marriage records. Within three months of the launch, the site reached more than two million views and over 170,000 downloads.  

The ARB report also describes progress on several grant projects including preservation and digitization of the Old Town ledgers with support from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. Other work detailed in the report includes recent “adoptions” of archival and library items in need of conservation treatment as part of the “Save New York’s Past” fundraising initiative sponsored by the New York Archival Society.  

Please take a few minutes to read the Archival Review Board FY 2022 Report and look for updates on progress of the archival program in future blogs.