APPENDIX F INFORMATION MANAGEMENT: STAFF AND PUBLIC ACCESS NOW, ARCHIVAL ACCESS LATER The Committee's work requires the rapid assimilation of large quantities of information assembled from disparate sources, and received in various formats and in widely differing states of organization. A central focus of staff effort has been creating the infrastructure (human and electronic) needed to organize this information not only for immediate Committee use and near-term public use, but also, upon the Committee's termination, for future use by citizens and scholars. Information Technology The Committee has a computer network consisting of Novell and Lotus Notes servers connecting 38 workstations. The network provides access to Lotus Notes (used for electronic mail and database applications, described below), shared word processing and graphics programs,, and the Internet. CD-ROM access is available at several workstations, and an optical character reader is also available. Electronic Information Services In addition to the standard mail and help databases, Committee staff members now have access to the following databases: o Document Collection contains lists and descriptions of all documents received by the Committee staff. It can be manipulated to show subsets of the collection of particular interest to the user. o Publications Collection serves as a catalog of published research materials held or used by the Committee. o ACHRE Indexes contains standard information sets developed by Committee staff (e.g., isotope formulas, acronyms, and other general information). o Experiment Index contains information in a standard format for each experiment indentified as of interest to the Committee, classified according to the agreed themes and emphases in the Committee's research. Additional databases include Timeline (a single chronology for items of research interest); Congressional Hearings Review (an index and commentary on congressional hearings and reports of research interest); News Clippings (abstracts of new items from all media of research interest, retrospective and current); Agency Data Requests Tracking (self-explanatory); ACBM Minutes Index (a complete set of the minutes of this important AEC component); and various discussion databases used by staff. Records and Records Services The archival collection now contains approximately 182 cubic feet of records in 370 separate collections. All records are to be reviewed at the collection level to determine the value of document-by-document review. The structure and handling of the Committee's own records has been addressed through the issuance of guidelines for records retention and the identification of lead staff members who are responsible for seeing that specific categories of records are preserved and organized. The staff also plans to create a comprehensive collection of electronic versions of important Committee documents, to provide better access for both staff and the public. Public Access Public access to some Committee information is now available in the Committee offices. Plans are being developed to provide electronic access. Public Records Area: The Committee offices (1726 M Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.) now contain a public reading area that has copies of agenda and minutes for all Committee meetings, including supporting documentation developed for or used by members of the Committee for those meetings; assembled collections of documents, such as agency histories or the minutes of meetings of agency committees; and descriptions of the collections of records deposited by the agencies, together with lists of significant documents identified in those collections. A staff member is available to assist the public with the use of Committee information, in both hard copy and electronic formats. Internet: Plans for external electronic access to Committee information currently include the following facilities: o E-mail. When the Committee's Internet gateway is in place, members of the public will be able to contact individual staff members directly. A procedure is already in place for handling these requests when they are received by mail or telephone, and that same procedure will be used for E-mail. o Gopher. A gopher server is an electronic repository of information that is accessible through the Internet. Individuals access the server using standard communications protocols and, using a series of hierarchical menus (or performing a text search), can identify the information they want and download an electronic copy to their own computer. The information available would include electronic copies of Committee meeting materials; important memoranda; text copies of records from several Committee databases, including the Document Collection, Publications Collection, and Experiment databases; and possibly some agency correspondence. o Newsgroup. This is a discussion list on the Internet that would be open to anyone for sending and receiving messages. The list would be moderated by Committee staff to provide information in response to requests, and to assure that the discussions remained pertinent and included no inappropriate messages. Permanent Records Under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), the Committee is obligated not only to provide in-office public access to its information, but also to ensure that its permanent records are appropriately preserved and deposited with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Guidelines for this process provided by NARA are explicit as to which records are permanent and which are not. The management of Committee document, publication, and office records collection has been structured to conform to these requirements and to ease the depository process. The body of deposited records will include the following: (1) the research document collection and its supporting electronic records management tools and indices; (2) those parts of the publication collection that are not owned by others (e.g., the DOE library), together with the supporting electronic management tools and indices; (3) all Committee records in whatever media that meet the permanency requirements of the NARA guidelines, including both electronic and print copies (when appropriate) of database records, database design documents and other metadata, and electronic mail and other records of communication, together with copies of the appropriate software and hardware specifications or, if feasible, the actual hardware and software required to use the information; and (4) other records or access facilities required to manage or preserve external electronic environments created by the Committee. Interest has also been expressed in the secondary deposit of copies of some Committee documents in other Governmental repositories. The appropriateness and feasibility of secondary deposits will be explored with NARA.