Information About Electronic Records in the National Archives for Prospective Researchers Center for Electronic Records National Archives and Records Administration Washington, DC 20408 Access to government information is essential in a democratic nation. It depends, to a large degree, on good recordkeeping by government agencies, on the preservation of important records, and on public access to those records. The information in records has considerable value in documenting the vast scope and great diversity of federal government activities and functions. federal records often are the best available sources of information for various kinds of research, including research in history, sociology, economics, and the natural sciences. What is the National Archives? The National Archives, part of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), is the statutorily authorized repository for "those official records which have been determined by the Archivist of the United States to have sufficient historical or other value to warrant their continued preservation by the federal government, and which have been accepted by the Archivist for deposit in his custody" (44 U.S.C. 2901). Since its creation in 1934, the National Archives has preserved noncurrent federal records for the protection of public and private rights and for research use. The holdings of the National Archives span 200 years of American history and document the immense range of activities of federal agencies. These archival records also reveal much about the lives and opinions of Americans, individually and collectively, throughout our nation's history. They contain vast quantities of information about our nation's economy and resources and about natural phenomena. Records available in National Archives facilities across the United States include those created by the courts, Congress, the President, Presidential commissions, and components of numerous federal agencies and bureaus. The National Archives promotes the fullest possible public use of the records in its custody, while protecting personal, restricted, or classified records and information against unauthorized disclosure. What is the Center for Electronic Records? The Center for Electronic Records is the organization within the National Archives that appraises, collects, preserves, and provides access to federal records in a format designed for computer processing. Where do records in the Center come from? Originally, these records are created or received by agencies of the federal government. They may concern virtually any area or subject in which the government is involved. They may be from any type of computer application such as data processing, word processing, computer modelling, or geographic information systems. How does the Center determine what records it will keep? Identifying permanently valuable records for retention by the National Archives involves cooperation between NARA and the various agencies of the federal government. Through the process of appraisal, the Center identifies and selects the electronic records it judges to have permanent value. When appraising electronic records, archivists evaluate the contents of the records for their administrative, legal, and informational value, and for their long-term research potential. Some of the factors in the decision include: whether the information is in its original form, whether the records can be linked with other information, how the records relate to past and present research trends, which federal agency created them and why, how the information was used, and what impact the records had on federal programs and policy. Generally, only a small percent of all electronic records are evaluated as having enduring value. The Center preserves electronic records in electronic form when their future use is enhanced by, or dependent upon, electronic processing. In some cases records may be preserved only on paper or microform by other units of the National Archives. What kinds of electronic records does the Center have? The Center maintains electronic records with continuing value created by the Congress, the courts, the Executive Office of the President, numerous Presidential commissions, and nearly 100 bureaus, departments, and other components of executive branch agencies and their contractors. In general, the electronic records transferred to the National Archives are themselves evidence of evolution in the application of computer technology in support of program administration, planning, recordkeeping, and research within agencies of the federal government. A few of the data sets were originally created as early as World War II and reflect punchcard technology in use since the 1880's; an even smaller number contain information from the nineteenth century that has been converted to an electronic format. However, most of the electronic records in the Center's holdings have been created since the 1960's. With over 10,000 data sets, the scope of the holdings, as would be expected, is quite diverse - as diverse as the activities and interests of the federal government itself. Among the types of holdings or subject areas represented in the Center's holdings are the following: Attitudinal Data. Included in this category are a wide range of data from surveys undertaken by a variety of federal agencies. For example, the Merit Systems Protection Board sponsored surveys that questioned federal employees about equal employment opportunity and affirmative action programs and other workplace issues such as sexual harassment and whistle-blowing. Other opinion surveys reflect the work of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, most notably their National Crime Surveys. Still others represent data from specially-commissioned surveys for the Presidential Commission on the Review of National Policy Toward Gambling and for the National Commissions on Social Security and on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. Two large collections of attitudinal data are described below under the discussion of international and military records. Demographic Data. A significant portion of the Center's collection relates to the population and housing data programs of the Bureau of the Census. The records include sample public use data from most of the decennial censuses of the 20th century, a substantial collection of social and economic indicators at city and county levels dating from the 1940's, aggregate statistics at many geographic levels from the 1970 Census of Population and Housing, and data sets from the monthly national Current Population Surveys and the Annual Housing Surveys. Demographic data from other agencies include records from the President's Commission on Population Growth and the American Future. Economic and Financial Statistics. Income, labor, securities, tax, trade, and transportation statistics, as well as work experience data come from a variety of federal agencies including the Bureaus of the Census, Economic Analysis, and Labor Statistics; the former Civil Aeronautics Board; the Department of Transportation; the Internal Revenue Service; the Securities and Exchange Commission; and the Social Security Administration. Ranging from public use samples of corporate and individual tax returns since the 1960's, to statistics on federal expenditures, to data on county, state, and national business patterns since the mid-1970's, to the estimates of the national income and product accounts and related regional estimates, to regulatory data from the aviation and securities industries, to historical statistics on work stoppages, to data from some of the Bureau of the Census' economic surveys and censuses, the data reflect most aspects of the nation's economy. Education Data. The Center's holdings from the Department of Education and a dozen other agencies illustrate the variety of education-related programs of the federal government. The records include data resulting from James S. Coleman's study of the impact of segregation, known as the Equality of Educational Opportunity Study; the Federal Trade Commission's investigations of standardized test-coaching schools; and the Civil Rights Commission's 1976 School Superintendents Survey regarding desegregation. Also available at the Center are the records of the President's Commissions on Campus Unrest (1970) and on School Finance, and the National Commission on the Financing of Post-Secondary Education. Health and Social Services Data. Health-related data deposited in the Center incorporate both biomedical and sociological information collected in studies such as the fifteen year National Collaborative Perinatal Project and the underwater experiments conducted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the late 1960's, as well as data collected in the Health Insurance Experiment in the 1970's and early 1980's and in national Surveys of Health Services Utilization and Expenditures. Other records come from surveys conducted on behalf of the Presidential Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island and the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse. Electronic records in the Center also derive from efforts to measure the effectiveness of a variety of social programs, including retirement history studies and income maintenance experiments, as well as studies on the impact of such federal programs as Aid to Families with Dependent Children and the Food Stamp program. International Data. The international data in the Center are highlighted by attitudinal surveys conducted since the 1950's in countries throughout the world on behalf of the U.S. Information Agency. The data from the over 800 USIA-sponsored surveys that have been transferred to the National Archives generally date from the 1970's. Other major collections of international data in the Center are the import and export statistics of the U.S., by commodity, dating from the 1960's. Military Data. Electronic records relating to military concerns include over 100 attitudinal surveys conducted during World War II (the "American Soldier"); records of repatriated prisoners of war from the European and Pacific theaters of World War II and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts; casualty records from the Korean and Vietnam conflicts; and a large collection of datasets resulting from the use of computers for military operations, management, and research dating from the 1960's, especially during combat in Southeast Asia. For example, there are electronic records on the government and people of South Vietnam, and the ground, air (including herbicide sprayings), and naval operations of the Vietnam conflict. The best known of the Vietnam-related electronic records, the Combat Area Casualties File, was one of the primary sources used to determine the names of casualties for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Records from the Presidential Clemency Board, 1974-75, also are included in the Center's holdings. Documenting more recent military events is the computerized index to the microfiche of the captured Grenada documents. Scientific and Technological Data. Records in this category include the National Register of Scientific and Technical Personnel dating from the 1950's, the National Engineers Register, and a 1971 Survey of Scientists and Engineers. Another series consists of an electronic index and text files transferred from the President's Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident. The Center's holdings include additional types of data, and they are constantly growing. Use the Request For Further Information on the inside back cover to request additional information about any area of interest. Are there any restrictions on access to electronic records maintained by the Center? Access to the electronic records transferred to the Center is subject to the terms of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). While most of the Center's holdings are fully releasable, the information in some data sets may be withheld in accordance with the exemptions authorized under the FOIA designed to protect national security, individual privacy, law enforcement investigations, or proprietary interest. Statutory restrictions on electronic records transferred to the National Archives remain in force until the records are thirty years old, unless extended by the Archivist of the United States. The National Archives protects against an unwarranted invasion of individual privacy, in general, for 75 years. In some cases where specific records or data elements within electronic records are restricted, the Center may make extracts of the records available in a disclosure-free version, also known as a public use file. This is accomplished by creating an extract of the data without the specific fields of information or records that make the data restricted. If these procedures do not suffice, National Archives regulations permit the release of restricted records under certain conditions defined in the appropriate portion of the Code of Federal Regulations (36 CFR 1256.4). What access and reference services does the Center provide for its electronic records? The reference service staff is available to assist researchers between 8:45 a.m. and 5:15 p.m., Monday through Friday. The Center's research room is in Room 18E of the National Archives Building, Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, between Seventh and Ninth Streets, Washington, DC 20408. The reference service staff of the Center provides information about the Center's holdings and assists researchers in finding those records that are most useful for their projects. A number of finding aids describe the holdings, including a Partial and Preliminary Title List of Holdings. Persons seeking information about electronic records should write to the address above or telephone the reference staff at (202) 501-5579. The Center's reference staff maintains active contact with the data service offices of several federal agencies and with public and private data centers across the nation. Through these contacts and secondary sources, the Center is aware of electronic records that are available from the other sources and can help researchers locate them. The documentation for electronic records in the Center's custody is available for use in the Center's research room. Photocopies of documentation for electronic records can be obtained either with the data or separately. In some instances, the documentation is available in electronic format or microform in addition to paper. Copies of records in the Center's custody are available for purchase by researchers on open reel magnetic tape. Electronic records preserved by the Center are maintained in a format compatible with contemporary technology. Most of the records can be processed without reliance on any specific computer hardware or software, except that access to a 9-track tape drive is needed. The physical format of the 9-track tape - in terms of encoding (EBCDIC or ASCII), internal labels (EBCDIC only), block size, and recording density (1600 or 6250 bpi) - is created in accordance with the user-specified technical requirements of the computer installation at which the data set(s) will be processed. Fees for reproduction services are set solely to recover costs involved in preparing and processing records for distribution. A general fee schedule is available from the Center and specific price quotations for potential orders which take user needs into consideration are available upon request. Prepayment is required for orders from individuals; purchase orders may be accepted from United States institutions and organizations. Are there any limitations on the services provided by the Center? Printouts (or dumps) of datasets, copies of datasets onto electronic media other than computer tape (i.e. floppy disks, CD-ROM, etc.), and extracts of datasets onto any media generally are not available. While the Center does not routinely produce extracts, tabulations, or formatted printouts, it has created them for a limited number of data sets related to records of casualties of the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. Information on these can be requested using the form on the inside back cover. For further information about the reference services offered by NARA's Center for Electronic Records contact the Center: Reference Staff Center for Electronic Records (NNX) National Archives and Records Administration Washington, DC 20408 (202) 501-5579 (FTS) 241-5579 REQUEST FOR FURTHER INFORMATION I would like to receive the following information about NARA's Center for Electronic Records: ___ Preliminary and Partial Title List of Holdings ___ Information about casualty lists related to the: ___ Korean conflict ___ Vietnam conflict ___ Information about a specific area of research: ___ Description of Services and Fees ___ Other assistance: ________________________________ NAME: ____________________________ ADDRESS: ____________________________ ____________________________ TELEPHONE: (____)____________________ _________ | | | Place | | Stamp | | Here | | | |_______| Reference Service Staff Center for Electronic Records (NNX) National Archives and Records Administration Washington, DC 20408 National Archives and Records Administration General Information Leaflet 1991