Carol Kussmann is the Digital Preservation Analyst and Jenny McBurney is the Government Publications Librarian at University of Minnesota Libraries.
The Save Our Signs project has been helping to Save our Stories since July 2025. With educational signs and displays at U.S. National Parks, monuments, and historic sites at imminent risk of removal or censorship, the SOS team recruited the help of the public to collect photographs of as many signs as possible before the initial submission deadline of September 17, 2025. The first iteration of the Save Our Signs Archive launched in October 2025 with over 10,000 photos of National Park Service Interpretive signs, submitted by people from all over the country.
The Save Our Signs project is a community collaboration co-founded by a group of librarians, public historians, and data experts in partnership with the Data Rescue Project with the goal of documenting signs of the U.S. National Park Service. Save Our Signs was formed as a result of U.S. Executive Order 14253, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which seeks to erase “negative” stories from public lands managed by the Department of the Interior, and the subsequent Secretary of the Interior Order 3431, which called for the removal of any materials that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.” Save Our Signs hopes to preserve our nation’s rich history by documenting the signs and exhibits used to educate visitors in the National Parks, the nation’s largest outdoor classroom.
To curate the photographs and launch the SOS Archive, the Save Our Signs team hosted the first volunteer photo curation session in September 2025 with staff at the University of Minnesota Libraries. During curation sessions, volunteers review photos and their submitted metadata (name of the park, the date the photo was taken, and perhaps a title) to make sure they fit the collecting policy. These sessions have been a time for colleagues across the Libraries to come together in person, look through submitted photos, ask each other questions, and be reminded of the beautiful places and historic sites across the United States.
Since the launch of the archives, photo submissions are ongoing and additional volunteer review/cataloging sessions have taken place, both in person and virtually. The archive currently provides access to over 17,000 photographs from 428 National Park Service sites.
The before-and-after photos submitted to the Save Our Signs Archive illustrate the importance of this preservation work. Over 100 signs at NPS sites across the country have been removed or censored, with language changed or removed to fit the current federal administration’s ideology. This example below is from the George Mason Memorial in Washington D.C. This sign used to explain that: “While George Mason championed individual rights, he paradoxically also enslaved about 300 people on his 5,500 acre plantation in northern Virginia.” In the censored sign, these facts about a founding father of the country have been removed.
Caption: Before-and-after images of censored sign in Washington, D.C. More details at: SOS Censorship Report: How History is Being Erased in DC
In addition to the photo archive, the SOS website also includes information and resources about censorship in the National Parks, and a SOS Censorship Tracker that monitors information about National Park Service interpretive materials that have been removed or censored in response to federal orders. These are shared through an interactive map interface as well as a spreadsheet with detailed information about the modification or removal.
Caption: SOS Censorship Tracker
In honor of World Digital Preservation Day 2026 with the theme of “Save our Stories”, the Save Our Signs team will be hosting an internal staff volunteer day for the Save Our Signs project to work on enhancing metadata on photo records in the Save Our Signs Archive. These enhancements will make the photos in the SOS Archive more discoverable and provide additional context for future users.
See the SOS FAQs page on the Save Our Signs website for more information about the photos included in the collection. All photos included in the SOS Archive have been released to the public domain, and the Save Our Signs team welcomes anyone to download and use them as they wish.