Electronic communications for reference services: A case study

Electronic C~mrnuni~~ti~n~ fur Reference Services A Case Study

Theodore J. Hull* Margaret 0. Adams

For more than three years, the Center for EIectronic Records of the National Archives of the United States has used a variety of electronic cummu~cation tools in its Reference Services program. These include monitoring and participating in a number of network “listservs,” using electronic mail (e-mail) for reference communication, and providing copies of descriptive materials and finding aids online on the international computer networks via file transfer protocol (ftp) and via a “gopher” server. Thii article describes the types of services offered and discusses the Center’s three years of experience with these tools. In addition, it provides an overview of constituency groups and vohune of inquiries received arid responded to using e-mail. Further, the analysis offers some general conclusions about the effects of electronic communications on the Center’s Reference Services program, and on the provision of networked isolation services more broadly. Reference staff at the Center for Electronic Records of the Nations Archives and Records Administration have used a variety of computer network tools over the course

of the last several years to enhance the services offered to researchers, potential and identified. This article describes the use of “listservs,” e-mail, and file transfer protocol (ftp) as reference and outreach tools by the Center for the three-year period that began in March, 1991. It also briefly discusses the expansion of these services with the advent of the National Archives “gopher server* in the summer of 1994. Since becoming actively involved with “listservs” and e-mail, and subsequently with ftp and “gopher” servers, Center staff have found use of these tools to be effective mechanisms for broadly transmitting information about the Center and its services and for communicating with researchers. Constituency groups served in this way mirror most of the groups served * Direct all correspondence to: lkxiore Records Ad~i~~tr~ti5~

X Hull, Center for ~ectronic Rem&, 8601 AdeIphi Road, Coikge Park, Magi ~~4~~.

Government Inform&ion Qnarterly, Volume 12, Number 3, pages 297-308. ISSNZ 074%624x.

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by the Center generally, with the possible exception of researchers from within the government and from the private, nonacademic sector. THE “LISTSERV”

AS A COMMUNI~TION

TOOL

Since the late 197Os, government, private enterprise, and academic institutions have become in~e~ingly interlinked through ~temation~ computer networks. One of the first publicly available networks, BITNET (“Because It’s Time Network’?, was developed during the mid-1980s, enabling rapid communication among researchers at educational institutions. More recently, the National Science Foundation-supposed Internet, has expanded the role and functionality of electronic communication, spurring exponential growth in the variety and numbers of users. As is fairly well understood today, BITNET and Internet offer users a means for commu~cating el~tro~~ly and a mechanism for rapid access to information maintained in computers that are linked to the networks. These capabilities have precipitated collaboration between researchers working on similar topics, among other uses-l Following the creation of BITNET, topically oriented electronic discussion groups developed, exploiting the availability of “server” software. As these discussion groups became more organized, they came to be known as list servers, or “listservs.” Listservs provide a forum for persons working on similar topics or interested in particular subjects. They work as follows: A computer linked to BITNET or Internet, often at an academic institution, becomes a “home node,” or central distribution point for a listserv. Participants in the “list” post messages by sending e-mail to the home node. The messages subsequently are automatically redistributed to all who are “subscribers” to the particular listserv. On moderated listservs, the moderator or editor reviews each message before redistribution to assure that it is appropriate to the goals of the listserv. Responses among the listserv subscribers to posted messages may be either sent to the listserv for the benefit of all subscribers or mailed directly to the initial poster. THE “1lSTSERV”AS

A REFERENCE OUTREACH

TOOL

Various staff of the Center for Electronic Records subscribe to selected listservs, chosen because the subjects under consideration most closely match the programs or holdings of the Center. The listservs currently monitored by Center staff and/or to which the Center posts messages include ACE (Americans Communicating Electronically), AHCL (Ass~iation for History and Computing List), ARCHIVES (Archives and Archivists List), ERECS-L (hlectronic Records Discussion List), GOVDOC-L (Discussion of Government Document Issues), IASSIST-L (International Association of Social Science Isolation Service and Technology Members List), OR-L (An Informal List for Official Representatives of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, ICPSR), PACS-L (Public Access List), POR-L (Public Opinion Research List), RECSMGT-L (Records Management List), SOS-DATA (Social Science Data List), and VWAR-L (Vietnam War Discussion List). Announcements are also sent to HISTNEWS and H-NET (History Network). A complete list of approximately 4,000 listservs may be obtained from any networked computer with the listserv software by sending a one-line message, LIST GLOBAL.

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As the unit of the National Archives responsible for the long-term preservation of the electronic records of the Federal government, Center staff have particular reason to communicate electronically with the community of computer network users. Thus, in the spring of 1991, Center staff first used listserv messages to announce the availability of printed materials about the Center and its holdings and then began using e-mail as an additional mode for communication with researchers by announcing this service through a message to the listservs. By participating on the above listservs, using them as described, the Center has increased its visibility with archivists, historians and other social scientists, public policy personnel, government documents librarians, data archivists/librarians and data users, veterans of the Vietnam conflict, and other people who monitor the named listservs. Subscribers to the ARCHIVES listserv include archivists in Federal, state, and local government archives; universities; and other archives in museums, libraries, and private business organizations. The discussions range from archival theory and practice and archival education to the application of microcomputers for intellectual control over archival holdings. One of the more active of the listservs is the GOVDOC-L, where questions and comments are raised about the use and availability of government documents. Government documents librarians are often in search of government-produced information or are interested in knowing about the availabiity of specific computer data files for their academic clients. Center staff have been able to reach a significant number of government document librarians through this listserv and have dist~buted to them numerous copies of the Title List of holdings and an informational brochure. As a result of this contact, a Center staff member was invited to speak at the Agency Update Session for the Government Documents Roundtable, American Library Association, and. the unpublished Title List has been catalogued by government documents librarians at the University of California at Berkeley, among others. In some cases, the AHGL, IASSIST-L, OR-L, POR-L, and SOS-DATA listservs carry similar messages as the GOVDOC-L, and cross-posting among these listservs has become common, as with many other categories of listservs. However, each listserv has its own primary audience, and those of the above listservs are largely representative of an interdiscipl~a~ mix of academicians concerned about computer data or data librarians at academic institutions. Their data questions are sometimes more conceptual and analytical in nature than those posted on other listservs. Center staff are able to contribute to the discussions, describing records in the Center’s custody and how they may provide a missing link for researchers. In addition, these researchers tend to have a fairly intimate knowledge of government data resources and, in turn, have contributed to Center staffs general knowledge about the variety of data products distributed by Federal agencies. Therefore, Center staff have learned about potential problems with some data tiles and have been able to anticipate how the Center will approach these records, when they are transferred to the National Archives. The PACS-L listserv is a discussion group subscribed to by academics, public policy personnel, librarians, and private-sector individuals interested in public access to government information. Much of the discussion centers around legislation affecting access to government information, such as Vice President Gore’s initiatives toward enhancing the national computing network infrastructure. The PACS-L discussants

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tend to be more internation~ in scope and bring to the discussions perspectives from other countries about access to government resources. Contributors to the VWAR-L listserv are largely veterans of the Vietnam couflict working in academia or otherwise conducting research on that topic. The moderator of this listserv is conducting an oral history project on the Vietnam War and encourages subscribers to provide narratives on their experiences. Because the Center has many acoessioned records series that deal with the era of the Vietnam conflict, staff have found the discussions to be educational and enlightening about the general scope of the war. In some cases, discussants are outside the academic arena. Their reason for subscribing and p~i~pating is more personal in nature. In these cases in particular, Center staff have contributed by providing information from records in its custody on a deceased buddy or a comrade who was missing and has been declared dead, much as they do in oral or traditional written reference responses. Therefore, the use of listservs as an initial means of reaching potential constituents has been quite effective. By introducing to selected listserv subscribers the availability of printed informational material about the Center and its holdings, and more recently resources in electronic form, these materials have been more widely disseminated than previously. Knowing the content and scope of the Center’s holdings, the staff have judiciously chosen for participation the listservs with a focus most related to the records in the Center’s custody and thereby have “targeted” constituencies most likely to benefit from knowledge of the Center’s holdings, The data presented below indicate the effectiveness of this strategy. ELECTRONIC

MAIL AND REFERENCE SERVICES General Overview

As noted above, the Center’s reference staff gradually began to use e-mail as a tool in its Reference Services program in the spring of 1991. Table 1 shows the steady reliance upon e-mail as a medium for receiving and r~ponding to reference inquiries since then. As shown, e-mail communications grew from approximately 13.5 percent of all inquiries in the first year to 16.7 percent in the following year, tapering off to almost 15 percent in the third year of this service. Likewise, in the first year of the service, e-mail communications accounted for approximately 37 percent of all written responses Tab/e 7 Total Reference Responsesand E-mail Communications, 3rd Quarter FY 1991 through 2nd Quarter FY 1994 Apd 1991~March 1992 April 7992~March 1993 April 1993~March1994

1230

4336 2029

311x 1318

461

724

464

13.5% 37.4%

16.7% 35.7%

14.9% 35.2%

Total responses Written responses E-mail communications

3408

E-mail as percent of total E-mail as petcent of written

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for Reference Services

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(both by e-mail and traditional mail, depending upon the wishes of the requestor and the nature of the request). In the second and third years, they relate to somewhat less, 35.7 and 35.2 percent, respectively, of all written responses. By the third year of use of e-mail for reference communication, the Center had developed its ftp site from which selected descriptive materials and finding aids are directly accessible to requestors online. Center staff anticipated a reduction in the number of inquiries by e-mail for copies of these materials, once they became available online. The statistics shown above (see also Table 2) suggest that availability of these materials online did, in fact, coincide with a decline in the demand via e-mail for general isolation about the Center and its holdings and services. This was also affected by the six-week curtailment in the Center’s Reference Service program (affecting the fmal period reported in Table 1) while the Center moved its staff, records, and equipment to the new National Archives Building in College Park, Maryland. Despite the impact of electronic communications on the Reference Services program, the possibility for using e-mail to communicate an inquiry to the Center did not cause a displacement of the traditional forms: letters, phone calls, and visits. Rather, the availability of electronic communication broadened the options available for the public to contact Center staff and appears to have expanded the commu~ty with which the Center interacts. Use of e-mail has become an integral part of the Center’s reference services, and its use by the public has steadily contributed to the overall level of demand for information in recent years. What is especially evident in the statistics is that in the first years during which e-mail communications were initiated, use of this medium resulted in an increase in overall demand. The resultant conclusion is that information providers should anticipate overall increased demand for their services when they expand commu~cation options, not a diversion of demand to the new medium. E-mail and Types of Inquiries The effectiveness of electronic communications as a mechanism for reaching specific constituency groups is reflected in Table 2, which reports septum statistics on individual reference inquiries received and responded to via e-mail by the reference staff of the Center for Electronic Records. Table 2 shows five general categories of inquiry: requests for copies of the Center’s informational brochure and/or Title List (TL/ Brochure), general inquiries about records on topical areas of interest, inquiries about the content or availability of specific electronic data files, inquiries about data tiles or individual casualty records from the Vietnam conflict (Vietnam), and general inquiries that lead to referrals to other units of the National Archives or other government agencies. These categories will be discussed in tum.2 As described earlier, shortly after the Center began using e-mail for reference services during the period April through September 1991, the Center used this communication vehicle to announce the availability of the descriptive brochure “Information about Electronic Records in the National Archives for Prospective Researchers” (General Information Leaflet 37; GIL 37) and the Center’s “Title List: A Preliminary and Partial Listing of the Data Files in the National Archives and Records Ad~~stration.” The Center originahy posted these announcements to four of the named listservs. As the statistics show, shortly thereafter, the Center received hundreds of requests for copies

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E-mail inquiries Received-Semiannually

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Table 2 by Category, April 1991 through March 1994

TitleList/ Brochure*

General

Specific

Vietnam

Referrals

Totafs

288 28 367 154 36 16

26 8 15 19 92 73

24 33 35 45 52 43

6 27 18 14 28 24

0 21 22 35 33 67

344 117 457 267 241 223

889

233

232

117

178

1649

* Brwhure available beginning second half of FY 1991. Its av~l~l~ty was initially posted to four iistsrvs.

of the materials. The Center annoyed the av~lab~ity of a revised version of the brochure in April 1992 to a larger number of listservs and once again, the statistics for April through September 1992 reflect the resulting demand. Then, during the period October 1992 through March 1993, Center staff posted a general ~nouncement for the first time to the PACS-L listserv, reaching an international audience of several thousand; again the experience was a surge in demand. In late spring of 1993, the Center developed a~remotely accessible ftp site, which has electronic versions of the printed informational material that had been the subject of the Center’s earlier announcements. The e-mail demand for these materials in printed form subsequently declined, as anticipated. The last page of the informational brochure has a detachable postcard with options for recipients to return the card to the reference staff to request further information about the Center and its holdings, as well as a copy of the Title List. Following the mass distributions of copies of GIL 37 that resulted from the listserv postings, more than 10 percent of the postcards were returned. Therefore, the electronic announcement of the availability of information about the Center led to increased demand for more indepth information about the Center’s holdings. From the earliest days of our presence on the networks, we received inquiries from researchers requesting general information about the availability of records on numerous topical areas of interest. These categories include economic data sources, microdata on a variety of subjects, records related to Latin America, the Soviet Union, and electronic records of the Bureau of the Census (Record Group 29) and Securities and Exchange Commission (Record Group 266). We have retained and reused the electronic versions of the responses to these inq~~~, and some have evolved into reference reports used by the reference staff for responses to similar inquiries received by traditional mail or telephone. An invitation to request a copy of the Center’s Title List for more comp~he~ive information about the Center’s records became a standard part of all e-mail responses to general subject inquiries posted to listservs. Responses to this suggestion account for some of the contin~ng demand for copies of the Titfe List. Also included in this general category of e-mail received are inquiries about how to obtain copies of records,

Electronic

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how to access the Center’s ftp site, and other requests or comments about the availability of remotely accessible resources from the National Archives. In general, dist~butio~ of the Title List often leads to specific inquiries about the Center% holdings. As the Title List functions as one of the primary finding aids to the electronic records in the custody of the National Archives, researchers tend to review the data file titles and then recontact the Center for more specific information about the content of data files. With the Title List, some researchers already know that a specific data file has been accessioned by the Center and request further information about its av~ab~ity. These “how can I obtain ?” types of inquiries are reported under the specific inquiry heading. The Vietnam inquiry category includes requests about the availability of operational files from the Vietnam conflict or about the content of casualty records for persons who died or were declared dead as a result of the Vietnam conflict. The Center for Electronic Records is the repository for a large number of electronic records series collected during the Vietnam conflict on specific military operations or programs3 One of the frequently referenced data fdes in the custody of the Center is the [Southeast Asia] Combat Area Casualties Current File (CACCF). Approximately 10 percent of the inquiries received by the Center armually are for information from this or other casualty data fdes. Currentiy, the October, 1994 update to the CACCF has records for 58,174 military personnel who died as a result of the conflict in Southeast Asia. A previous version of the CACCF was one of the primary sources for the names that appear on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Typically, researchers are interested in the content and av~abi~ty of a record or records relating to a family member or fellow serviceperson who died as a result of the Vietnam conflict. As a result of the Center’s presence on a number of topic~ly-o~ented listservs, and of the general awareness that some National Archives staff can be reached via e-mail, the Center has received a growing number of inquiries about nonele~ro~c resources of the National Archives or the Federal government. In response to these inquiries, Center staff refer researchers to the appropriate reference unit in the National Archives or the data services or public affairs unit of a Federal agency. What has become clear is that the network-using public is anxious to use electronic commu~ca~on as an entree to the Federal gove~ent. Absent specific e-mail addresses for the agencies or branches that intuitively would seem to be the most appropriate to the inquiry, many address their request to an available e-mail address within the government, with the expectation that the recipient will knowwhere to refer the inquiry, The Center’s reference staff attempt to meet this challenge as best they can, but expectations of omniscience on the part of reference staff, while flattering, can sometimes exceed what is possible. Perhaps such expectations also reflect some of the hyperbole that is a reality in an information age rich with computer technology. Overall, as shown in Table 2, the types of inquiries received by the Center via email have changed over time. Initially, the Center received numerous requests for copies of descriptive materials and general information about electronic records in the custody of the National Archives. More recently, inquiries have become more substantive and specific in nature. Also, as the first of the National Archives’ reference staffs to utilize e-mail for communication with researchers, the Center increasingly has served as an initial access point to the staff and reference units of the National Archives generally.

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In the summer of 1994, the User Services Division of the Office of the National Archives established a general electronic “mailbox” address.4 Time will tell if this has the effect of diverting the general inquiries the Center has been receiving to the new address. OTHER

NETWORK

SERVICES

File Transfer Protocol (ftp) The file transfer protocol is software, set up with Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol (TCPj IP), that allows transfer of data fries between computer systems. Thus, ftp facilitates access to public, or anonymous, accounts set up on numerous computers. The software allows researchers with access to it, to retrieve and copy data files from a public, or anonymous, account on one computer to another computer over the international computer networks. The original data file remains intact; persons using ftp to access and copy the original data file from a remote computer to their own cannot alter the contents of the file on the remote site. Almost immediately after the Center began using e-mail for reference services, researchers began requesting copies of descriptive materials, finding aids, and records in electronic form. In response to this demand, in April, 1993, the Center established an ftp site on the mainframe computer it has been using for network communications, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) mainframe.5 The files available at this site include a copy of the Title List (frequently updated), two informational brochures (GIL 37 and “Information about the Center for Electronic Records,” GIL 36), a handout about its services, and a brief description of the Center. No accessioned electronic records are currently maintained on the ftp site. The NIH support for the ftp software does not allow for the collection or compilation of statistics on the frequency of access to the indi~du~ ftp directories or subdirectories on the NIH ftp site, such as the one maintained by the Center for Electronc Records. Therefore, the Center is unable to determine the number of researchers accessing these materials. However, we have received sufficient inquiries about data fdes, formatted identically to the formatting of the titles in the Title List on the ftp site, to know that at least some researchers are learning about the Center’s holdings this way. Likewise, as mentions above, the e-mail demand for printed copies of the materials now accessible electronically via the ftp site has declined. Reactions to the implementation of remote access to descriptive materials about the Center and its holdings have generally been positive. However, not all researchers had immediate success. For example, some interested researchers were unfamiliar with the ftp implementation at their computing facility, did not know whether the computer system on which they had an account supported ftp, or did not know how to employ the ftp software to which they had access. In many cases, researchers who could not initially access the ftp site or were having problems were provided with step-by-step inst~ctions or referred back to their computing support staff for isolation about their local implementation of the ftp software. All of this represents new variations in the kinds of support services that the public expected of Center reference staff. Other comments received from researchers were associated with the expectations of accessing not only information about electronic records in the custody of the Center but also

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the records themselves. More than a few researchers have communicated their disappointment that data files in the Center’s custody are not available online for search and retrieval. Few of those who raise this issue, however, seem to grasp the complexities inherent in responding to this expectation, given that the Center currently has custody of approximately 20,090 unique files of electronic records, that the holdings increase continually, and that they consist of computer files of varying sizes and forms from almost every agency of the Federal gove~ment. As ftp provides only a basic level of access to computerized files, researchers necessarily have to copy the files to their own computer for further manipulation, including selective retrieval. For researchers, capabilities for utilizing online resources such as those maintained on an ftp site relate directly to the types and level of software available in each researcher’s own computing environment. These are as varied as the market allows, and absent st~d~d~tion, there is no way that any government agency or other information provider can compensate for the many differences in capabilities supported. Such limitations relate to another area of some consternation among researchers. Currently, the Title List, one of the files on the Center’s ftp site, is over one megabyte (l,OOO,OOO bytes) in size. While to many researchers the size of this file is not a problem, to others, depending upon their access to storage space on their computer, it has caused some difficulty. Available storage space is usually a function of allocations related to computer accounts. Numerous researchers let us know that the size of the Title List was too large for them to download to their own computer, or was too large for their searching software to handle efficiently. Thus, by implementing the ftp site and maintaining a variety of files there, Center staff became aware of a wide range of the problems potenti~y encountered by researchers, problems that could not have been anticipated prior to announcing the availability of the ftp resources. The responses to offering this basic level of compute~zed access to descriptive files about the Center and its holdings co~ectively form an important building block for Center staff as we move toward providing enhanced access to other electronic resources. The file size problem, for example, had not been anticipated by the Center. It appears to be in conflict with the oft-repeated expectation for online access to electronic records files. Most of the electronic records files in the custody of the Center are considerably larger than one megabyte, and, thus, if researchers have difficulty downloading a fmding aid of something less than a megabyte in size, how realistic are the expectations for downloading files of electronic records that tend to be much larger in size? Gopher Servers In the fall of 1993, the Library of Congress estab~sh~ LCMarvel, a gopher server. A gopher server allows for a unified presentation of materials about a particular organization and for links to other gopher servers worldwide, and provides for the search and retrieval of the formation being made available. LCMarvel incorporated the Center for Electronic Records’ ftp-able materials, as well as descriptive materials from the Non-Textual Archives Division of the National Archives, by then also available via an ftp site.6 In this way, these materials became available for online search and retrieval via the Internet, expanding beyond the copying that ftp supports.

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In the summer of 1994, the National Archives established its own gopher server.7 The informational materials from the National Archives formerly searchable on the Internet via LCMarvel are now directly accessible on the National Archives’own gopher server. The expansion of electronic communication capabilities at the National Archives directly relates to the opening of the new National Archives facility in College Park, Maryland, a state-of-the-art archival facility with a computer network linked to the Internet. To no small extent, the experiences of the Center in utiliing electronic communication vehicles in its Reference Services program influenced the development of the National Archives gopher server. For the Center for Electronic Records, the appearance of the National Archives gopher has provided a vehicle for expanding its offering of informational materials online and for responding to some of the critiques discussed above. In particular, the Center’s Title List of Holdings is accessible on the National Archives’ gopher server as 18 smaller files, separating the full Title List into groupings of titles, each of which reflects the records for an Executive Branch department, independent executive agencies, and the judicial and legislative branches of government, as well as a category for donated historical materials. The full Title List continues to be available from the ftp site for researchers for whom this mode of access is more desirable than via the gopher server. In addition, the Center has added an entirely new category of descriptive materials, informal reference reports and descriptive handouts as files on the National Archives gopher server, so that these materials can also reach a wider audience, with little or no direct intervention by Center staff. It is still too early to draw any conclusions about effects of the availability of these materials on the overall demand for more detailed information about the Center’s holdings or on requests for reproductions of electronic records in the Center’s custody. None~eless, there is already evidence that the av~ab~ty of these materials is spurring new interest among the network-“surfing” public. Importantly too, having the Center’s materials accessible on the National Archives’ gopher server means that they are now more clearly and contextually part of the larger online offering of information about the holdings of the National Archives and its many services and programs. The National Archives’ gopher server, thus, structures a context for the Center’s i~ormation~ materials, placing them approp~ately among the rich resources researchers can explore in any search for some aspect of the documentary heritage of the U.S. government and society. CONCLUSION The National Archives, through the efforts of the Center for Electronic Records and more recently other staffs, has moved toward the provision of online access to selected finding aids and other descriptive materials via the Internet. For the Center, this was a natural outgrowth of its responsibilities for preserving the most valuable electronic records of the Federal government. Early in what is the very recent history of electronic commutations, Center staff thought it would be useful to attempt to contact electro~c~y researchers with access to mainframe computers, who were the primary early users of the international computer networks. They were an obvious constituency with a clear potential interest in the records in the Center’s custody.

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On the basis of experiences to date, reference staff of the Center for Electronic Records expect the volume and variety of inquiries received and responded to using e-mail to increase in the future. It is difficult to predict the long-term impact of using e-mail for reference services and outreach, but all indications are positive. The Center has received a number of positive comments about participation in the listserv discussions as well as about the ftp site and gopher server. Some researchers at times seem astounded, first that the National Archives has electronic records in its custody, and second that the Center has the variety and volume of electronic records it has. For the Center’s staff, utilization of electronic tools for communicating with the public has meant that the staff has acquired firsthand experience with the numerous permutations of these tools and their output, knowledge that is especially helpful when it comes to appraising the long-term value of the electronic records of the Federal government. As the National Archives moves more and more to automate finding aids and other descriptive materials on the records in its custody, the public should see enhanced access to these resources. Not unpredi~ably, the speed with which this will occur will be directly related to resources. There is no question, however, that the National Archives is looking toward providing access to descriptive information about its holdings in a widely available mode that takes advantage of the evolving information highway. The electronic communications tools employed by the Reference Services program of the Center for Electronic Records and the development of the National Archives gopher server are but the earliest evidence of this commitment. In addition, both the Federal Register and the National Archives Fulfillment Center (National Audiovisual Center) have developed bulletin boards electronically accessible via dial-up modem.* For electronic records, the Center hopes soon to be in a position to develop automated reference tools whereby researchers can access online metadata (data about data) related to the Center’s holdings as well as some selection of electronic records. Other enhancements might include an expansion in the types of media for providing reproductions of electronic records and, someday, capab~ities for standardly retrieving and copying from a selection of electronic records files, either remotely or on-site at the new research facility at the National Archives at College Park.

NOTES AND REFERENCES See,for example, Avra Michelson and Jeff Rothenberg, “Scholarly Communication and Information Technology: Exploring the Impact of Changes in the Research Process on Archives,” The American Archivist, 55 (Spring, 1992), pp. 236-315. 2. Detailed statistics are reported in an untitled Center for Electronic Records report on the use of e-mail and listservs. 3. See M.O. Adams, 1991. “Vietnam Records in the National Archives: Electronic Records, Prologue: Qrwlerly of the National Archives, 23 (1991), pp. 76-85. 4. The National Archives general information e-mail address is [email protected]. 5. The file transfer protocol site is at FTP.CU.NIH.GOV, directory NARA_ELECTRONIC. 6. Also maintained at FTP.CU.NIH.GOV, directory NARA_AUDIOVISUAL. More recently, the National Archives has tested providing limited access to an anonymous ftp site (FTP.NARA.GOV). A public directory (pub) has been established and more units within the National Archives are beginning to make reports and other publications available via this service. 1.

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The National Archives gopher server (CUD) address is G~PHER.~ARA.G~~ M~~~~Wor~d Wide Web interface available at http:[ /gopber.nara.gov/. On October 1, 1994, the Nation& Archives FtdfXment Center became part of the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) of the Department of Commerce.