Surely one of the worst results of the sequestered budget is the early closing of the National Archives.  It used to be that the Archives were open until 9 W-F, which meant it was entirely possibly to get a nice 44 hours in the archives in only a few days, W-saturday. Now the building is going to be open only until 5 except for one week a month.  And they are going to do fewer record pulls each day overall.  Since you have to wait for materials under the best of circumstances, everything is going to be slower. This is truly terrible news all around. The late hours made it very easy to go to DC for a long weekend and get an enormous amount accomplished with some good 12 hour days. Now it will take more time and cost more as a result.  (Though it will mean more time to eat chapulines tacos, which I like to get at a restaurant right near Archives I in DC. At Archives II in College Park, I prefer to go get Korean food)

The article says only 17% of users stay until 9. I can't imagine that there is much budget associated with these late hours. The staffing was skeletal, most of the building is closed, and there ar eno record pulls.  Why not let a bunch of people sit around and sort through old records?  I am quite certain a year of archival costs is eaten up in a month of the jet practice runs going on just over Virginia Beach each month.

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