The mission of the Friends is to support and advance the work of the National Archives of the Southeast Region. Most especially, we seek to promote the use of the Archives, not only for family history and genealogy, but also to spread an understanding of the incredibly rich and varied holdings of the Archives, and how researchers of all types can use these to expand knowledge of our history and of our heritage.
We will do this by employing our expertise and using our special contacts with state and local history societies, archives, libraries, schools, colleges and educators, as well as genealogical groups, to increase an appreciation of how the Archives and its unique holdings complement and extend their resources for research.
We will support, with publicity, logistics, and our own presence, the outreach programs and commemorative celebrations conducted by the Archives. We will bring to the attention of Archives staff opportunities for them to "spread the word" about their matchless resources on the history of the South, and facilitate their efforts to do so.
We will promote outreach to our members, to interested parties and to the public through the publication of the Civil History and by maintaining our website. We will ensure that we use these vehicles to tell the story of the valuable opportunities for research at the Archives, and how we can facilitate this.
We will lead the way in learning about and utilizing the non-traditional genealogical and family history sources found in the Archives (such as TVA records on family and cemetery relocations), and will publicize our accomplishments, for example, in our newsletter and on our website.
We will better realign the volunteer activities of the Friends and all others to further the mission of the Archives. We anticipate calling for more volunteer efforts in outreach activities. And we will continue to encourage and facilitate work on individual and group projects at the Archives. We will recognize the successes of volunteers and their accomplishments.
We will encourage research activities at the Archives by donating special equipment and materials (such as books, microforms and software) to complement the resources already available there. Both Friends and archive staff will actively make suggestions on ways to make improvements here, and we will urge members of the public to do so.
The FNAS bylaws are avaible in PDF format (you will need Arcrobat Reader version 4 or greater to read these papers).