Distinguished Service Award: FRASER Team of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

The Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research (FRASER) team of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis is the 2024 recipient of the Distinguished Service Award given by the Society of American Archivists (SAA). The award recognizes an archives institution, education program, nonprofit organization, or government organization that has given outstanding service to its public and has made an exemplary contribution to the archives profession.

FRASER is a historical digital library made available by the Federal Reserve Digital History and Archives team at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. FRASER serves as both a subject repository with a focus on US economic history and an institutional repository of the Federal Reserve System. For more than twenty years, the FRASER team has worked to provide a holistic view of the history of the US economy and financial system by building a free digital repository and providing superior reference and outreach services. They take pride in their careful collections development, detailed metadata organization, and individualized reference assistance. In an online post, Peter Conti-Brown, associate professor of financial regulation at the University of Pennsylvania, refers to FRASER as “such a shining jewel for economic and financial historians that gets shinier every day."

The FRASER team excels at establishing collaborative relationships that benefit both the institutions involved and the general public through the resulting additions to the digital repository. As one supporter notes, “As a part-time archivist, I don’t have resources for extensive planning. I consider FRASER a ‘best practices’ model for what I am trying to accomplish in terms of organization and metadata.”

The selection committee was impressed with the FRASER team’s commitment to the archival profession over several years and their commitment to discoverability through the development of excellent tools and processes that serve their audiences at no cost.