The National Archives of the United States was thrust into the spotlight last year after the FBI raided the home of former President Donald Trump, who was accused of being in possession of classified documents.

But the legacy of the independent federal agency is far from controversial. Created by Congress in 1934, it serves as a repository of the country’s heritage, including the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Overseeing the National Archives from 2009 until his retirement in April 2022 was Northeastern University graduate David S. Ferriero. The 10th archivist of the United States, he was appointed by President Barack Obama.

Ferriero previously served for five years as the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries. Prior to that he served in leadership positions at two of the nation’s major academic libraries, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Duke University.

And it all began 60 years ago when he first matriculated to Northeastern. After serving as a Navy hospital corpsman during the Vietnam War, Ferriero earned his bachelor’s degree in 1972 and his master’s in 1976.

Northeastern Global News recently interviewed Ferriero about his distinguished career. His responses have been edited for length and clarity.

You grew up in Beverly, Massachusetts. What drew you to Northeastern and what was your experience like?

It was clearly the co-op program because that was the only way that my family would be able to afford a college education. I’m the first one in my family to go to college.

I actually had two Northeastern careers. I came out of Beverly High School in 1963. I was really influenced by my teachers in the Beverly Public School system. I came out of that education wanting to be a teacher, so I was an education major to begin with at Northeastern. I used to cut classes and go to the Museum of Fine Arts and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

I was so bored that I dropped out and joined the Navy, and when I came back after four years, my second Northeastern career began. I came back as a much more mature student. I was actually a liberal arts major at that point with a concentration on literature and history. And then I came back later and did a master’s in literature.

Once you earned your degrees, you worked at Duke and the New York Public Library. How did those opportunities come about?

I’ve had really great opportunities and great jobs. I was at MIT for 31 years and expected to retire from there. I got a call out of the blue saying that they were looking at me for the director of the library at Duke. I’ve been fortunate in my career that I haven’t applied; I’ve been recruited. I loved my eight years at Duke, and out of the blue, I got a call from the New York Public Library that they were looking at me for the director of the research libraries. 

I went to the interview and it became clear that I knew enough about the business and it was an exciting opportunity to expand my knowledge base, and it was New York, I mean, my God! The flagship public library system of the United States. And then from there, it was the same situation. I was recruited to the federal government on a Friday afternoon when the White House called saying that they were looking at me for archivist of the United States.

I bet you remember that conversation. What was that process like?

My assistant came into the office and said the White House was on the phone. I was surprised, and so I got on the phone and the person working on appointments for the White House said, “Well, aren’t you surprised to be getting a call from the White House?” 

Kyle Watkins was an undergraduate at George Washington. He was working for David Jacobson, who was then the president’s appointments person. He’s the one who found me. He had done a lot of Google searching for the search committee.

Before that, my sense of presidential appointments were people who knew the president or who had contributed a lot of money to a campaign and, frankly, didn’t know anything about the position that they were being recruited for. So I was highly, highly suspicious that they would recruit someone who knew the job. 

Tom Wheeler, who was on the search committee, who later became the head of the FCC, kind of described what the administration was looking for in the role of the archivist and the administration’s Open Government Initiative. The picture he painted was exciting and interesting, and there again I knew enough about the business. In my entire career, I had had responsibility for archives, institutional archives. So I went to Washington, had further discussions and then the whole vetting process for the Senate confirmation started.

Once you got to the National Archives, you made a lot of improvements, things like cloud computing, social media and the digitizing of presidential libraries.

I’m always looking for ways to improve access to materials. So I am trying to make it easy for people to find what they need, break down the barriers that are impeding them, and turn as much power over to the end user as possible. 

I was on the train to Washington for the confirmation hearing and reading in the New York Times that the White House had just let an RFP [request for proposal] for help in managing their social media. I’m sitting there saying to myself, “Oh my God, why are they going outside the federal government to get support? That’s the role of the archives.” 

When I got on board, I authorized them to order 25 iPhones and 25 iPads just to fool around and start experimenting. 

And now the National Archives is on 16 different platforms. My direction to the staff always has been to figure out where the people are and get our material in front of them. Don’t expect them to find us. You need to be aggressive in determining where they are and what we can learn from them in terms of how they’re discovering information—using information—and how we can then incorporate those kinds of things into our core business.

That was kind of the guiding philosophy?

Right. And most importantly, the National Archives is responsible for providing guidance to the federal government about the records implications of all the technologies they’re using. So if the Archives isn’t using social media and the agencies are, how on Earth could we provide guidance on stuff that we’re not?

Is there something about the Archives that you feel would surprise most people?

Most people don’t realize that the archivist of the United States is responsible for administering the Electoral College and administering the constitutional amendment process. In terms of the Electoral College, it’s establishing the date of the Electoral College meetings. Receiving the certificates from the states on the electors. Ensuring that the vote is taken and that it is authorized by the secretary of state and then moving the finished product up to the Hill for Jan. 6, the vote from Congress. 

On the constitutional amendment side, the same thing: sending out the proposed amendment to the states, receiving the ratifications and then making an announcement about whether it passed or not.

About the National Archives, on the strange things in the collection side, we have a finger in a jar of formaldehyde from an old federal court case. We have a dead mole that was submitted as proof of a widow’s pension file from the Civil War in order for the family to get the pension of the deceased Civil War soldier. They had to prove that the soldier was actually somehow in the Civil War. Usually it’s a letter or something. 

But in this case, the dead soldier had sent the mole to his wife to show what the living conditions were in his tent, and she used that to prove that her husband had served. And we do have, as part of the presidential libraries, all the gifts that come in to the president. I think we have the largest macaroni painting collection in the world. Kids who have made portraits of the presidents with macaroni. So there are all kinds of very interesting and fun things in the presidential libraries.

Looking back from where you are now, what do you think your biggest accomplishment was?

I think that the work that we did during the Obama administration around establishing electronic recordkeeping as the mode of record creation and capture. It was the first time since the Truman administration that the White House has gotten involved in recordkeeping. My mantra throughout that whole process was you can’t have open government without good recordkeeping.

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