[House Document 109-156]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]



				HOUSE DOCUMENT NO. 109-156


			ADVISORY COMMITTEE


			      on the 

			RECORDS OF CONGRESS


	(Established under Authority of Public Law 101-509 
			November 5, 1990) 

			FOURTH REPORT


		       December 31, 2006


	Compiled by the Office of History and Preservation,
	Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives

		under the direction of
        Karen L. Haas, Chairman (November 19, 2005 - Present)
	 Jeff Trandahl, Chairman (June - November 17, 2005)
				And
		Emily J. Reynolds, Vice Chairman



                        Ex Officio Members


Hon. Karen L. Haas, Chair (Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives, 
November 19, 2005 - present, Washington, DC 20515-6601) 

Hon. Jeff Trandahl, Former Chair (Clerk, U.S. House of 
Representatives, January 6, 1999 - November 18, 2005, 
Washington, DC 20515-6601) 

Hon. Emily Reynolds, Vice Chair (Secretary, U.S. Senate, 
Washington, DC 20510-7100) 

Hon. Allen Weinstein (Archivist of the United States, National 
Archives and Records Administration, 700 Pennsylvania Avenue, 
NW, Washington, DC 20408) 

Richard A. Baker (Historian, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC 205107108) 

Robert Remini (Historian, U.S. House of Representatives, 
Washington, DC 20515-6612) 

                        Appointed Members 

Joseph Cooper (Professor, Department of Political Science, Johns 
Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218-3688) (House 
Democratic Leader) 

Paul Gherman (University Librarian, Vanderbilt University, 419 21st 
Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37240) (Secretary of the Senate) 

Timothy Johnson (Curator of Special Collections & Rare Books, 
University of Minnesota Libraries, Minneapolis, MN 55455) 
(Speaker of the House) 

Alan C. Lowe (Executive Director, Howard H. Baker Jr., Center for 
Public Policy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-4006) 
(Senate Republican Leader) 

Susan Palmer (Professor of History, Department of History, Aurora 
University, Aurora, IL 60506) (Clerk of the House) 

Guy L. Rocha (Nevada State Archivist, Nevada State Library and 
Archives, 100 North Stewart Street, Carson City, NV 89701-4285) 
(Senate Democratic Leader) 


PREFACE


Six years ago, the Advisory Committee on the Records of 
Congress's Third Report identified three trends in the world of 
congressional documentation: the increasing volume and complexity 
of the records of individual Members of Congress, the conversion of 
electronic records in Member and committee offices, and the dispersal 
of Members' papers to numerous institutions within each 
state. In this Fourth Report, the Advisory Committee documents the 
substantial progress made in addressing the trends raised in the 
Third Report. Records management practices in offices of Members 
of Congress, long-term preservation of electronic records, the 
establishment of the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress, 
completion of renovations to the National Archives Building in 
Washington, D.C., the planning and construction of the Capitol 
Visitor Center; and the continued exhibits and outreach projects of 
the National Archives and the Center for Legislative Archives are all 
discussed at length in the following pages. 

Significant, unforeseen events have also affected the work of the 
Advisory Committee on the Records of Congress during the past six 
years. The 9/11 attacks, and the establishment of the National 
Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States to review the 
events surrounding these attacks, resulted in the creation and 
transfer of the commissionï¿½s records to the Center for Legislative 
Archives. The discovery of anthrax in mail addressed to Members 
of Congress led to the disruption of mail delivery and the 
irradiation of all mail coming to Capitol Hill, and has permanently 
altered procedures for processing mail sent to Capitol Hill. Further 
strides in capturing and preserving electronic records are evident 
in the establishment of Electronic Records Archives (ERA) at the 
National Archives, as well as NARAï¿½s web harvesting project, which for 
the first time in 2004 captured, preserved, and made accessible web 
sites of all government agencies, including the legislative branch. 

Recommendations for continued work by the Advisory Committee are 
outlined in the following Executive Summary. 
These recommendations build on the successes documented in this 
Fourth Report regarding records management, access, and preservation, 
as they relate to the records of Congress and to the private 


papers of Members of Congress. As we look ahead at the next six 
years, we are confident that these recommended tools will ensure 
the long term management, preservation, and access to congressional 
records and Membersï¿½ private papers. While there is much 
to do, much has been accomplished. 


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY


The Advisory Committee was formed in 1990 to focus increased 
attention on the status and use of the official records of the House 
and Senate and Membersï¿½ personal papers. Over the past sixteen years, 
the committee has served as the single, national forum where the 
concerns of the broadly dispersed congressional papers community and 
its Washington partners can be given voice. Every six years this 
committee assesses the progress made and challenges that confront us. 
This Fourth Report documents how much has been accomplished; it 
also shows that change is the only constant in the record-keeping 
world. The committee will continue to monitor, guide, and support 
our records partners as they face a challenging future in documenting 
the history of representative democracy. 

In its Fourth Report to Congress, the Advisory Committee on the 
Records of Congress highlights four critical developments: progress 
made in providing guidance in records management and support for 
the preservation of official and personal papers; advances in 
electronic record keeping and archiving; the establishment of the 
Association of Centers for the Study of Congress to facilitate access 
to congressional records and advance public understanding of 
Congress; and, through the completion of the Capitol Visitor Center, 
the transformation of the Capitol into a visitor friendly environment. 

The first two reports of the Advisory Committee focused on developing 
the official records of Congress at the Center for Legislative 
Archives at the National Archives and Records Administration 
(NARA), while the Third Report turned its attention to preserving 
Members' papers. This report reflects the trend within the community 
of congressional archives, fostered by the Advisory Committee, 
to take a more coordinated and collaborative approach to both types 
of records. 

 Chapter I presents new guidance and outreach efforts to 
promote better records management practices on the Hill. It 
highlights the 2001 anthrax attacks and the impact of irradiation of 
government mail and the long-term preservation of records. 
The accessioning of the permanent records of the 9/11 
Commission at the National Archives gives the Center unique 
responsibilities and resource challenges to preserve these complex 
and important records and provide access to researchers. 

 Chapter II chronicles the rapid change of technology and its 
impact on document retention for the House, Senate, and congressional 
support services. The continued progress of 
NARAï¿½s Electronic Records Archives (ERA) project, and the 
promising alliances formed with a variety of top-tier public 
and private partners, demonstrate the advances made in the 
development of solutions to overcome dependencies on current hardware 
and software programs. NARA's capture of 
information posted on federal government websites within the 
last six years preserves another valuable and ever-changing 
form of digital information. Also featured is a description of 
the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 
Committee electronic archiving project. 
 Chapter III covers Members' papers and ongoing issues 
described in the Third Report. Of particular importance is the 
establishment of the Association of Centers for the Study of 
Congress, a newly created organization that brings together 
archivists, historians, political scientists, and others from congressional and public policy centers interested in advancing 
public understanding of Congress. 

 Chapter IV summarizes the completion of renovations of the 
National Archives Building. 
 Chapter V details the planning and construction of the Capitol 
Visitor Center (CVC), which will provide many opportunities 
to present the story of the Capitol to visitors, researchers, and 
students. 
 Chapter VI highlights the new exhibits at the National 
Archives and the Center for Legislative Archives' outreach projects 
featuring congressional records. 
 Chapter VII updates the progress made in areas targeted in the 
first three reports. 
In the 16 years since its inception, the Advisory Committee notes 
substantial progress in the following areas: 

 Establishing a strongly staffed Center for Legislative Archives 
and completing the renovation of the Centerï¿½s facilities. 
 Establishing better archival, administrative, and intellectual 
controls over the records of congressional committees and 
improving committee records management guidance through 
publications and seminars. 
 Providing Members' offices records management guidance 
through publications and briefings. 
 Initiating cooperative activities amongst the Center for 
Legislative Archives, the Congressional Papers Roundtable of 

the Society of American Archivists, and the Association of 
Centers for the Study of Congress. 

 Establishing a strong preservation/conservation program for 
the Center for Legislative Archivesï¿½ holdings and investigating 
new preservation challenges such as the irradiation of congressional 
mail. 
 Initiating a program of electronic records management and 
preservation. 
 Establishing educational resources and exhibits using the 
archival holdings of the Center. 
 Improving access to congressional archives through the 
publication of finding aids, historical and biographical publications, 
and additional print and web resources. 
 Monitoring the planning, design, and construction of the 
Capitol Visitor Center. 
To improve the management, preservation, and access to 
Membersï¿½ papers and committee records, the Advisory Committee 
recommends the following: 

Records Management and Collections Development 

 Encourages committees to manage and preserve significant e-
mail in light of the "lessons learned" by the Senate Homeland 
Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. 
 Encourages the Center to collaborate with other organizations 
to sponsor conferences and symposia on congressional records 
management and improving scholarship. 
 Recommends that legislative support agencies review and 
update records schedules as needed to reflect new records formats and technologies. 
 Recommends revision and updating of the report entitled The 
Documentation of Congress (S. Pub. 102-20) to reflect new types 
of documentary sources and to assess the extent to which the 
initial recommendations have been fulfilled. In December 
1992, the Advisory Committee adopted a resolution accepting 
the recommendations of the report as "providing a model 
framework for discussion and planning of future coordinated 
actions among the Congress, the Center for Legislative 
Archives, and the hundreds of archival repositories across the 
nation that specialize in preserving the historical documentation of Congress." The report outlined a comprehensive, coordinated approach to improving documentation of the legislative branch. Many of these recommendations are reflected in 
the list at the end of the Fourth Report. 

Preservation 

 Encourages the Legislative Mail Task Force to use findings 
provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to 
consider alternative means of irradiation which would cause 
less damage to the archival materials. 
 Recommends further study of the most effective ways to 
preserve and promote the use of Members'
papers. 
 Encourages committees to transfer a copy of executive session 
transcripts at the end of each Congress to the Center. 
Access


 Encourages the House, Senate, and Center to use the World 
Wide Web to expand access to a wider community users to a 
growing body of congressional information and documentation. 
 Requests the Center to expand the Committee Resource Guides 
(CRG) of the Standing Committees History Project within the 
next three years to include all 19 standing committees of the 
House and the other 15 standing committees of the Senate. To 
reach this goal within the next three years, the Center will 
employ the combined efforts of the archival and outreach staffs 
and interns. 
 Requests the Center to provide updates on the status of the 
records of the 9/11 Commission, including the effect on Center 
staff resources. 
 Requests a study and report by the appropriate congressional 
office on current gift tax law and its effect on the donation of 
Membersï¿½ papers. 
 Encourages the Association of Centers for the Study of 
Congress (ACSC) to attract member organizations from all 
states in pursuit of the goal to establish at least one congressional center in each state and to collaborate on the development of programs and products to advance scholarly research 
on Congress and promote public understanding of representative government. 
 Supports the collaborations of the Center and congressional 
centers to continue and expand educational workshops promoting teaching about Congress in United States history and 
government classes. 
 Encourages partners to continue to collaborate on the exhibits 
and educational programs in the CVC. 
 Requests the Center to develop a pilot project to evaluate the 
feasibility of scanning microfilmed records of Congress in 
order to make them available to researchers on the National 
Archives website. 

CONTENTS 

I. Preservation of and Access to 
Official Records of Congress


A. Records Management Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 

B. Anthrax and Mail Irradiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 

C. Public Records in Private Hands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 
Center for Legislative Archives, National Archives 
and Records Administration (NARA): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 

D. 9/11 Commission Records . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 

E. Accessions and Loans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 

F. Reference Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 

G. Preservation of House and Senate Records . . . . . . . . . . .10 

H. Records Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 

I. National Archives Website and 
Center for Legislative Archives Website . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 

II. Electronic Records 

A. National Archivesï¿½ Electronic Records Archives (ERA) . .13 

B. Web Harvesting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 

C. Electronic Records Transfer Recommendations . . . . . . . .15 

D. XMLProject in Senate and House . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 

E. Senate Committee on Homeland Security 
and Governmental Affairs (HSGC) 
Electronic Archiving Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 

F. Senate Document Management System 
for Senate Offices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 

III. Preservation of and Access to Membersï¿½ Records . . . . . . . . . .21 

A. Congressional Papers Roundtable 
of the Society of American Archivists 
and the Advisory Committee Task Forces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 

B. Member Records Management Recommendations . . . . .22 

C. The Association of Centers 
for the Study of Congress (ACSC) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24 

IV. National Archives and Records Administration . . . . . . . . . . .27 

A. Building Renovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27 

B. Report on Summer 2006 Flood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28 


V. The U.S. Capitol Visitor Center: 
History, Education and Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31 

VI. Outreach Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 

A. American Originals: Traveling Exhibit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 

B. The National Archives Experience: Public Vaults . . . . . .35 

C. Exhibits and Films at the Capitol Visitor Center . . . . . . .37 

D. Educational Publications and Workshops . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 

E. Conferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 

F. Anniversaries and Special Facsimile Packets . . . . . . . . . .41 

G. Internships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 

VII. Status of Recommendations From 
the First Three Advisory Committee Reports 
and Analysis of Resource Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43 

A. Maximizing Documentation of the Legislative Process .43 

B. Preservation Priorities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 

C. Access and Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 

D. Outreach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 

Appendix A: The Homeland Security Governmental Affairs 
Committee Electronic Archiving Project Report 
by Elisabeth Butler, Archivist, 
Committee on Governmental Affairs . . . . . . . . . . . .53 
Appendix B: Funding Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55 
Appendix C: Biographies of Committee Members . . . . . . . . . . . .57 
Appendix D: Statute Establishing Advisory Committee . . . . . . . .61 


FOURTH REPORT OF THE 

ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON THE 

RECORDS OF CONGRESS 

I. PRESERVATION OF AND ACCESS TO 
OFFICIAL RECORDS OF CONGRESS 
A. Records Management Guidance 
Two committee issues related to official records have persistently 
challenged the Advisory Committee since its creation in 1991. The 
first issue involves Membersï¿½ private papers and their retention in an 
appropriate facility. Some Members have regarded their committee 
records as personal property either to be shipped to their archival 
repositories when they leave Congress or to be destroyed. The second relates to the records and papers of committee staff. Since staff 
turnover rates continue at high levels, this situation deprives committees of their long-term institutional memory and erodes practices 
designed to promote systematic record-keeping. Both actions threaten the continuity of congressional history. 

The Senate and House archivists, working through the 
Congressional Papers Roundtable (CPR) of the Society of American 
Archivists, have informed repository archivists about the statute law 
and standing rules of their respective congressional bodies that prohibit Members from transferring original committee records to any 
institution other than the National Archives and Records 
Administration (NARA). This communication has led to the retrieval 
of misdirected records. 

During the past six years, both the House of Representatives and 
the Senate have continued to encourage committees to improve the 
records management practices of their staffs. The House has worked 
towards updating records management guidelines for committees. 
Originally the House Legislative Resource Center consulted with 
committees on archival matters and the transfer and retrieval of 
records with the Center for Legislative Archives, NARA. When the 
Office of History and Preservation (OHP) was created in 2002, it 
became the entity designated to work with committees regarding 
archival matters. 


OHP compiled and published an updated manual for committees 
titled Records Management Manual for Committees of the U.S. House of 
Representatives. The manual retains much of the same information as 
the former manual, titled Archiving Committee Records. Committee 
records still are identified by the following series: legislative, oversight and investigative and administrative records. Additional information targets specific archival topics for committees. These topics 
include preparation of committee records for transfer to OHP, 
retrieval of retired committee records from OHP and NARA, handling of classified committee records, and preservation of electronic 
committee records. More detailed guidelines describe the types of 
records typically kept by a committee with recommendations on their 
proper disposition. Blank copies of forms for committee use in transferring records are provided as well as for authorizing staff access to 
records. OHP created separate brochures on several of the topics 
mentioned to provide committees with the information they may 
need concerning their records. This year the committee manual and 
brochures have been professionally published and distributed to all 
committees and are available on the Intranet website for the Clerk of 
the House. 

OHP continues to conduct a yearly workshop for committee staff 
on how they should create, maintain, retire, and retrieve records. 
Representatives from the Center for Legislative Archives participate 
in the workshop and describe the services they provide. 

The Senate Archivist revised and reissued the Records Management 
Handbook for United States Senate Committees in 2005. In an effort to 
provide additional guidance to chief and minority clerks, a new section delineates their vital role in overseeing records management. 
This guidance represents a combination of "best practices" of several 
committees. It encourages the chief and minority clerks to: 

 Direct records retention and disposition activities throughout 
the committee and subcommittees. 
 Transfer non-current records directly through the Senate 
Archivist, and if the chief clerk/minority clerk does not retain 
a master set of transfer documentation, designate an 
archivist/records manager to do so. 
 Ensure that the staff are briefed when they are hired and periodically thereafter about their responsibilities to maintain complete 
and well organized records. 
 Designate individuals at all levels to assist in the preparation of 
committee records for transfer to the Center for Legislative 
Archives, NARA, at the end of each Congress and at other 
times when necessary. 

 Ensure the retention and timely archiving of all transcripts of 
committee hearings, business meetings, nomination files, and 
official communications. 
 Ensure that a set of briefing books prepared for hearings are 
routinely archived by majority and minority staff. 
 Ensure that records of significant legislation, oversight issues, 
and investigations are properly managed and routinely 
archived. 
 Ensure that material prepared for archival retention includes 
all relevant files, especially electronic versions of documents. 
In addition, the Senate handbook encourages committees to hire 
people with archival/records management expertise or provide staff 
training. A sample job description is included in the 2005 edition of 
the handbook for the committeesï¿½ use. During 2000 two committees 
(Finance, and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs) hired 
archivists to assist with records management and archiving. By 2003, 
the Senate Judiciary Committee hired two full-time archivists, one 
each for the Republicans and Democrats, and in 2005 the Senate 
Budget Committee employed an archivist part-time. The implementation of the training and archivist recommendation has resulted in a 
significant improvement in the record keeping practices of these committees. 

Electronic recordkeeping is re-emphasized by highlighting the 
experience of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and 
Governmental Affairs (See Section II - Homeland Security and 
Governmental Affairs Electronic Archiving Project). In August 2004, 
a protocol was developed with help from NARA that facilitates 
archiving of electronic documents from the committee. Staff is 
reminded that committee servers must not be deleted and wiped 
clean before committee documents have been archived. Chief clerks, 
minority clerks, and committee archivists are advised to work with 
the systems administrators to provide adequate guidance to all committee staff. It stresses that staff should be guided in: 

 Naming and grouping documents into folders on internal network drives. 
 Creating archive folders in email and grouping all relevant 
communications into the appropriate folders. 
 Segregating and deleting irrelevant files of departing staff. 
 Archiving all pertinent electronic documents of departing staff. 
 Ensuring the security of information. 
 Transferring the permanent electronic documents to NARA. 
To encourage increased attention to recordkeeping, the Senate 
Committee on Rules and Administration asked each committee to 


submit a report on its archiving activities in 2004 as part of the committeeï¿½s 2005 appropriations request. Committees were given reports 
prepared by the Senate Archivist with help from the Center for 
Legislative Archives staff detailing accessions sent to the Center during 1998-2004. The plan is to repeat this reporting requirement at 
each budget cycle. The reports serve to reveal important shortcomings and gaps in document retention, which can be addressed during 
individual meetings between the Senate Archivist and committee 
clerks. Special emphasis will be placed on ensuring that mark-up 
transcripts, briefing books, nomination files, and records of major legislation and investigations together with the relevant e-mail are being 
sent to NARA. 

In 2004 the Senate Archivist discovered a wide variety of practices 
by committees in sending their mark-up transcripts to the Center. As 
a result, all committees were urged to follow the lead of the Senate 
Finance Committee and create a security backup version of the transcripts. Some committees have used the OnBase document management system operated by the Senate Imaging Lab to save the electronic transcripts on microfilm and CD-ROMs. Others scan the transcripts in-house and send the paper version to the Center for security storage. All committees currently have copies of their transcripts 
stored off-site at the Center. 

The Senate Archivist conducts an annual records management 
seminar for committee staff and individual office briefings upon 
request. Prior to the conclusion of each Congress, committee chief 
clerks and assistant clerks are invited to the Center for Legislative 
Archives for a briefing and tour. 

The 2004 revised edition of Records Disposition Procedures for the 
Offices of the Secretary of the Senate presents guidelines for identifying 
and transferring the principal records to the Center for Legislative 
Archives. It establishes paper-quality standards for permanent 
records, and identifies critical records, which should be duplicated 
and stored off-site at the Center for Legislative Archives for security 
reasons. The offices of the Secretary and Sergeant at Arms oversee 
and administer the plans of individual offices in order to maintain 
vital records and continuity of operations. 

In 2000 and 2001 the Senate Archivist worked with staff in the 
office of the Sergeant at Arms (SAA) to draft a comprehensive records 
schedule that was presented by the retiring SAA to the Senate 
Appropriations Committee as part of the SAAï¿½s accomplishments 
package. 

During 2004 and 2005 the Senate Archivist worked with officials in 
the Capitol Police headquarters to draft a comprehensive records 


schedule, Records Management Policy and Procedures and Records 
Disposition Schedule, which was adopted in February 2005. The schedule represents a first for the Capitol Police and facilitates the use of 
the Washington National Records Center for the storage of their temporary records. 

B. Anthrax and Mail Irradiation 
In October 2001 the office of Senator Tom Daschle in the Hart 
Senate Office Building received an unidentified letter containing 
anthrax. Additional letters laced with anthrax arrived at other 
Membersï¿½ offices a few days later. The Hart Senate Office Building 
and several other congressional facilities were closed for extended 
periods of time during testing and decontamination. 

In November and December 2001 the U.S. Postal Service began to 
irradiate mail coming to Capitol Hill. Irradiation works by disrupting the DNA of hazardous microorganisms and preventing their 
growth and reproduction. As a result of the anthrax incidents, mail 
delivery has been adversely impacted and the use of e-mail and faxes 
has become a preferred method of communication. 

The House and Senate Archivists attended a briefing at NARA in 
June 2002 regarding the irradiation of congressional mail and its long-
term effects on paper. Discussions were held about what to do with 
historically valuable documents, such as certificates of election that 
irradiation would damage. Alternative means of delivery for these 
items have been implemented. 

In December 2002 NARA conservators reported on the impact of 
irradiation on archival materials to a Mail Irradiation Interest Group, 
which included the House of Representatives, Senate, Center for 
Legislative Archives (NARA), White House, Library of Congress, 
NARA Preservation Programs, Document Conservation Laboratory, 
Presidential Materials Staff, National Institute of Standards and 
Technology (NIST), and the Department of Commerce. NARA has 
posted a "Frequently Asked Questions" section on its web site offering initial guidance to records managers in handling irradiated documents. 

NARA has maintained a liaison with NIST and the Armed Forces 
Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI) concerning the U.S. mail 
irradiation program and its long-term implications for archival 
records. In order to deactivate potential biohazards, such as anthrax, 
the U.S. Postal Service continues to irradiate first-class business and 
letter-size envelopes and flats, Express and Priority mail, and other 
packages that are addressed to specific government offices in 
Washington, D.C., containing Zip Codes 20200 through 20599, which 


include the buildings on Capitol Hill and the National Archives in 
Washington, D.C. 

Future refinements of the mail irradiation protocol might exploit a 
combination of lower-dose irradiation and other antimicrobial 
processes to provide broad-based and effective sanitation with less 
degradation of treated materials. NARA will continue to monitor 
developments and provide updates to the Mail Irradiation Interest 
Group. 

NARA is investigating the effect of irradiation on archival materials. In October 2004, NARA released a memorandum outlining the 
implementation of a proposed new process developed by the White 
House Office of Science and Technology Policy Task Force on Mail 
Irradiation and supported by NIST. Ultimately, consideration of new 
protocols and processes would be the responsibility of the Legislative 
Mail Task Force. The Legislative Mail Task Force is a joint entity created in January 2002 and comprised of representatives from medical 
and scientific agencies tasked to study methods to ensure safe and 
timely mail delivery to the House and Senate. 

C. Public Records in Private Hands 
In 2002 the Clerk of the House raised the issue of "alienated 
records" for discussion with the Advisory Committee. Certain documents from the Forbes Collection auctioned by Sothebyï¿½s, Inc., had 
come to the attention of the Clerkï¿½s Office. The auction inventory 
included two messages from the president, which were nominally 
congressional documents, including the presidentï¿½s 1812 war message to the U.S. House of Representatives. 

The Sothebyï¿½s auction raised a number of complicated issues 
regarding the care and history of congressional documents that date 
from an earlier era before statutes and House and Senate rules 
defined archival practices and mandates. Some documents have long 
ago been separated from their institutional origins and now reside in 
private collections and repositories. 

The Advisory Committee identified the following questions as 
being central to the issue of public records in private hands: 

 How should these records be identified? 
 Under what circumstances should an agency of the government attempt to recover these records? How should current 
holders of the documents be approached? 
 What institutional entity should be responsible to identify and 
pursue acquisition of these records? 
After a series of discussions with representatives from the manuscript community, the National Archives assigned selected staff mem


bers in 2004 to monitor the public sale of federal documents and 
records. If records were identified for sale or auction, the monitors 
would contact the custodial agent and the Office of the Inspector 
General when appropriate. In the case of legislative documents, the 
monitors contacted the director of the Center for Legislative Archives 
(NARA), who in turn alerted the House and Senate archivists. 

In late 2005 the National Archives signed a cooperative agreement 
with the National Coalition for History (NCH), a non-profit organization composed of more than 70 archival and historical organizations, to establish a pilot project to systematically monitor manuscript 
markets and identify documents that appear to have been stolen or 
otherwise alienated from archival and historical collections. NCH 
will make regular reports to the National Archives on its activities 
and findings. 

The House enjoyed a recent success when a former staff member 
who worked on both House and Senate committees made an inquiry 
about records he possessed. When it became clear that the records 
were official committee records covered under both House and 
Senate rules, the former staff member graciously donated the materials to the House and Senate and the papers now reside with the 
records of the appropriate committees at the Center for Legislative 
Archives (NARA). 

The Advisory Committee also discussed the possibility of encouraging private collectors to loan significant national documentary 
treasures to be displayed in the exhibitions in the Capitol Visitor 
Center (CVC). Scheduled for completion in late 2007 or early 2008, 
the CVC provides Congress with the opportunity to tell its story to 
the millions who visit the Capitol each year, and for private collectors 
to consider the loan of documents for display in a world-class exhibit. 

Center for Legislative Archives, 
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA):


D. 9/11 Commission Records 
The Center for Legislative Archives, National Archives and 
Records Administration (NARA) is the custodian of the permanent 
records of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the 
United States (the 9/11 Commission), which was defined by a 2002 
statute as a legislative commission. Conducting one of the most 
important investigations in the nationï¿½s history, the Commission produced a best-selling report, a frequently-visited website that featured 


digital versions of its public hearings and reports released to the public, and an archive comprised of 600 cubic feet of textual records and 
more than one terabyte of data in electronic form. 

The commissioners strongly encouraged NARA to maintain an 
operational version of the Commission's archived website so that the 
public would have uninterrupted access to the open hearings, unclassified reports, staff monographs, and other materials made available 
by the Commission. NARA has preserved the website and maintains 
a public access version at the original URL 
(www.9-11commission.gov). 

Currently, 20 percent of the Center's archival staff time (from a total 
of six full-time archivists on staff) is devoted to processing the 9/11 
Commission records. The Center estimates that it will require a minimum of six full-time staff beginning in FY 07 to review and process 
the unclassified records by the opening deadline of January 2009. 
Since there are no plans to expand the size of the Center staff, additional assistance will be sought from other National Archives units, 
which themselves are under pressure to meet other processing deadlines. 

The Commissionï¿½s extensive and varied electronic records pose 
their own unique challenge. Typical of modern records, they include 
a document management system, e-mails with attachments, digital 
audio and video files, web records, databases, and word processing 
files. The Electronic and Special Media Records Services Division at 
NARA is responsible for the preservation of the electronic records 
and will also assist in providing access to these in the future. 

E. Accessions and Loans 
Over the last six years, the Center accessioned 21,443 cubic feet of 
House and Senate records, a 39 percent increase over the 15,396 cubic 
feet of records accessioned in the period covered by the Third Report. 

This impressive growth of legislative records reflects in part 
Congressï¿½ response to some landmark events that have distinguished 
the recent past-including the response to the attacks of September 
11, major shifts in tax policy, a government reorganization, and the 
reorientation of national security policy. Total holdings at the Center 
currently exceed 185,000 cubic feet of records. 

The most critical function performed by the Center is the prompt 
and timely response to House and Senate committee requests for 
archived records to conduct urgent business. Working closely with 
House and Senate Archivists and committee staff when necessary, the 
Center processed a total of 1,006 separate committee requests for 
records over the last six years, a 27 percent increase over the 791 loans 


processed and documented in the Advisory Committeeï¿½s Third 
Report. 

NARAï¿½s promise to deliver records to committees within 24 hours 
of receiving a request is contingent on the availability of drivers and 
trucks from the Facilities Division. For additional logistical support 
to meet this goal, the Center has recently made arrangements with 
the Metro Courier Service at the Washington National Records Center 
to supply additional transportation options. Metro Courier Service is 
responsible for records transportation to and from federal agencies 
throughout the Metro area, so they are well equipped to provide service to the House and Senate. 

F. Reference Trends 
The reference staff has continued to provide high-quality service to 
meet the needs of a diverse research clientele. During the last six 
years, staff responded to a total of 14,362 telephone inquiries; 4,960 
letters, emails, and reproduction orders; and 3,966 walk-in 
researchers. They retrieved a total of 22,287 items (boxes, trays, and 
bound volumes) for researchers to view in the research room. 
Researchers have requested assistance on such diverse topics as legislation designating federal lands as wildlife refuges, government 
assistance to African American Civil War veterans, tariff legislation 
during the Woodrow Wilson administration, salaries of Senate clerks, 
and the House Judiciary Committee investigations of the Justice 
Department during the 1950s. 

The Center has become increasingly active in providing support to 
scholars working on a variety of path-breaking works on Congress, 
including biographies of Lyndon Johnson and Stuart Symington, 
major works on Congress and World War II, congressional reform in 
the 1960s and 1970s, congressional oversight of the intelligence community during the Cold War, Congress and environmental policy, 
Congress and the Korean War, a history of the Senate in the 20th century, and a history of the House of Representatives. Political scientists have used House and Senate records to explore a variety of topics, such as committee assignment requests, the Senate confirmation 
process, the gate-keeping function of the House Rules Committee, 
and the 20th century use of discharge petitions in the House. 

The staff responds to the shifting interests of the public, trends 
within academia, and the influx of researcher demands for records 
that recently have become publicly available. All of these forces converged to create a spike in researcher interest after the 2001 opening 
of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) records. 
The Center released more than 400 cubic feet of HUAC records to the 


public in accordance with public access provisions for non-current 
permanent records outlined in House Rule VII. The Center will continue to screen the remaining closed records on a case-by-case basis 
and release them in accordance with House Rule VII. Researchers 
have been especially interested in executive session transcripts and 
notable figures, such as Alger Hiss and the "Hollywood Ten." 

G. Preservation of House and Senate Records 
Central to the Centerï¿½s mission is the physical preservation of the 
records of Congress. Preservation of House and Senate records is 
continuous and pervades many of the Centerï¿½s projects and initiatives. The Center has worked with NARAï¿½s Document Conservation 
Lab in the preparation of House and Senate documents before they 
go on public display. The Document Conservation Lab also created 
custom housings for the valuable and voluminous Senate collection 
of political cartoons created by Clifford K. Berryman. The primary 
focus of the Centerï¿½s holdings maintenance staff remains the copying 
of thermofax records onto archival bond for permanent preservation. 

As an added precaution during the renovation of the National 
Archives Building, the Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the 
Senate directed the Center to relocate the records of the first 14 
Congresses and the Centerï¿½s vault collection of the most historically 
valuable records to a secure vault in another location. A new state-ofthe-art vault has been constructed in the National Archives Building, 
with improved fire detection, fire suppression, and electronic security systems to provide the most secure and safe environment for irreplaceable House and Senate documents. The legislative treasures 
were returned to the vault in 2006, and on September 21, 2006, 
Speaker of the House, J. Dennis Hastert joined Archivist of the United 
States, Allen Weinstein, and Director of the Center for Legislative 
Archives, Richard Hunt, for a special viewing of legislative treasures 
and for a brief press event. 

H. Records Description 
The Centerï¿½s records description activities have been driven by 
NARAï¿½s commitment to complete the Archival Research Catalog 
(ARC), the agencyï¿½s online catalog of records descriptions. In the last 
two years the Center has entered more than 750 series descriptions 
covering 49 percent of its holdings. The agency-wide goal of providing access to 80% of NARA's total holdings by 2008 through ARC 
means the Center will continue to devote significant staff resources to 
this endeavor. This labor-intensive project will consume additional 


resources when more detailed descriptions are added to the series 
level entries for the online catalog. 

The Center prepared a "Committee Resource Guide" for the 
records of the Senate Committee on the Budget, which is available on 
the Centerï¿½s website. The "Committee Resource Guides" supplement and update the records descriptions included in the 1989 Guide 
to the Records of the United States Senate at the National Archives. Due to 
the creation of the Budget Committee in 1974 and the 20-year access 
rule for Senate records, the new resource guide provides the first 
description of Budget Committee records available to the public. 

I. National Archives Website and 
Center for Legislative Archives Website 
On July 20, 2005, NARA unveiled its newly designed website, 
http://www.Archives.gov, which recently won a "Best Practices, 
Best Web Design in 2005" award for federal government websites. 
This redesign, the second one completed in the past five years, was 
undertaken to improve the websiteï¿½s ease of use, provide access 
points for important customer groups, help users more easily access 
the vast resources of NARA, and improve its overall appearance and 
functionality. Among the many new features on NARAï¿½s website, 
one of particular note is a "Legislative Branch" records portal displayed on the main page that provides a direct link to the Center for 
Legislative Archives website and information concerning House and 
Senate records. 

The Centerï¿½s website, http://www.Archives.gov/legislative, has 
undergone two major redesigns since 2001 and provides the user 
with a range of options and search tools. The first page is entitled 
"Center for Legislative Archives," which provides the user with 
information on the Center, its publications, and reports to Congress. 
The Centerï¿½s main holdings can be accessed through "Researching 
Congress." This link affords the public access to finding aids to the 
Centerï¿½s congressional records, the 9/11 Commission Report, and the 
Advisory Committee Reports and meeting minutes. For researchers 
who would like to view a broad-range of congressional topics, the 
feature "Resources" affords an invaluable online access to the 
Centerï¿½s collections. 

New features have also been added to increase usability and content offerings. The "News and Events" section provides information 
on recent and up-coming events at the Center for Legislative 
Archives and NARA. The "Featured Document" section highlights a 
historically significant document from the records of the House and 
Senate and provides contextual information as well as printable high


resolution digital images. A search feature for the on-line House and 
Senate Guides has been added, and a Center-specific email address 
can be accessed directly from the Centerï¿½s web page 
([email protected]). 

Another addition to the Centerï¿½s website is a section on the 9/11 
Commission records, which features the Staff Monograph on the Four 
Flights and Civil Aviation Security, released after the Commission 
expired. Users can also gain access to the archived version of the 
original 9/11 Commission website through the Centerï¿½s web pages. 

In 2002 the Center assumed responsibility for the "Congressional 
Collections at Archival Institutions" website formerly hosted by the 
University of Delaware. This portal to congressional papers collections dispersed around the country is one of the most heavily used 
features on the Centerï¿½s site. The "Congressional Collections" pages 
aid researchers by providing a centralized listing of the location of 
Membersï¿½ personal papers, links to the repositoriesï¿½ websites, and 
finding aids when available. Access is provided alphabetically by 
state, hosting organization, and Memberï¿½s name. There are over 86 
participating institutions listed that collectively house the personal 
papers of thousands of Members of Congress. 

Another major online recourse was the "Our Documents" project, 
completed in 2003. "Our Documents" was an effort to make available 
online the top 100 most influential documents in American history 
from 1776 to 1965. The project was created by NARA and National 
History Day in collaboration with USA Freedom Corps to give 
Americans a better understanding of the records that shaped our 
country. Fourteen of these documents are from the records of the 
House of Representatives and the Senate and many others reflect the 
work and influence of Congress. The Center played a key role in 
acquiring high-resolution images of these documents online and 
accessible to the public. 


II. ELECTRONIC RECORDS 
A. National Archivesï¿½ Electronic Records Archives (ERA) 
The Electronic Records Archives (ERA) is NARAï¿½s response to the 
challenges inherent in the diverse, complex, and enormous volume of 
electronic records being created today, as well as the rapidly changing systems used to create them. ERA will be a comprehensive, systematic, and dynamic means for preserving virtually any kind of electronic record free from dependence on specific hardware or software. 
When operational, ERA will support NARAï¿½s mission by making it 
easy for the public and government officials to locate and access the 
original records of our government and by facilitating NARAï¿½s presentation of those records in convenient formats. 

Since the onset of research contributing to ERA development in 
1998, NARA has included congressional electronic records collections 
in tests to ensure that specific technical characteristics and requirements assigned those collections continue to be considered in ERA 
planning and development. The inclusion of test collections from the 
104th Congress provided significant contributions to the 1999 results 
in collection-based preservation. In addition, a test collection of 
Senate records from the 106th Congress contributed to the 2001 
breakthrough results in highly rigorous formal logic-based preservation. 

Other records in the Centerï¿½s custody, such as the 9/11 
Commission records, incorporate a multitude of record formats 
including streaming video files, databases, digital photos, audio 
recordings, office automation documents, email with attachments, 
web pages, and paper records. The variety of file formats included in 
these records pose new preservation challenges and will contribute to 
the further development of ERA. 

Much of the information used today to secure our borders, protect 
our citizens, coordinate relief efforts, and make the laws of the land 
will be needed long after the computers and software that created 
them are obsolete. The day-to-day operation of what we now refer to 
as our e-Government depends on reliable management of the rapidly increasing amount of electronic records created every hour by 
Congress, the courts, and the Executive Office of the President. ERA 
will make it easier for these entities to transfer their electronic records 
to NARA. 

ERA holds the promise of preserving all the important work of 
Congress that is created and preserved electronically. ERA will also 


provide the functionality to enable committee staff access to records 
stored in ERA to conduct current business. 

On September 8, 2005, the Archivist of the United States 
announced the award of a $308 million, six-year development contract to Lockheed Martin to build ERA. On September 8 the ERA 
Program Director announced the formation of a high-level committee 
to advise and make recommendations to the Archivist of the United 
States on issues related to the development, implementation, and use 
of the ERA system. This 20-member committee is named the 
Advisory Committee on the Electronic Records Archives (ACERA). 
ACERA will provide an ongoing structure for bringing together 
experts in computer science and information technology, archival science and records management, information science, the law, history, 
genealogy, and education. 

Currently Lockheed Martin Corporation is actively building the 
system which will be available to schedule and transfer electronic 
records beginning in the fall of 2007. 

B. Web Harvesting 
In the fall of 2004 NARA conducted a systematic harvest (i.e., capture) of federal agency public websites. Web harvesting is the process 
of automatically copying and organizing unstructured information 
from pages and data on the World Wide Web. The harvest produced 
a public reference copy of websites for the purpose of determining 
the continuity of availability to the public and produced a recorded 
copy to be preserved in the holdings of NARA. 

The 2004 harvest collected approximately 6.5 terabytes of information, roughly 75 million web pages from approximately 50,000 ".gov" 
and ".mil" unrestricted federal web sites active between October 14, 
2004 and November 19, 2004. Websites included in the harvest were 
identified from information provided by the U.S. General Services 
Administration's (GSA) ".gov" Internet Domain Registry. The harvest 
included 52 specific sites from the legislative branch, including the 
Senate and House web domains from the 108th Congress, and legislative branch agenciesï¿½ websites. 

After the harvest of federal agency websites in 2004, NARA 
planned to conduct similar harvests every four years to coincide with 
the cycle of presidential terms. The Senate Archivist, however, raised 
the concern that harvesting at four-year intervals would not adequately document significant changes in congressional web content 
driven by the two-year congressional election cycle. NARA and 
Center for Legislative Archives staff, in consultation with the House 
and Senate Archivists, IT Support Services staff under the Senate 


Sergeant at Arms, and the House Information Resources staff under 
the Chief Administrative Officer of the House, concluded that the 
harvest schedule of congressional records needed to be modified to 
capture changes in each Congress. As a result, NARA plans to harvest Senate and House websites at two-year intervals and will use 
web lists provided by the House and Senate. 

The first Congress-specific harvest, at the conclusion of the 109th 
Congress in the fall of 2006, will include approximately 615 websites 
and the capture of an estimated 120-160 gigabytes of information. 
The harvested "snapshot" of the congressional websites will be suitably documented as a historic record and made accessible to the public. Each page will be properly labeled as a NARA record with its 
date of capture, and all external links blocked, so users do not confuse 
the historical record with current, live web content maintained on 
active congressional websites. 

C. Electronic Records Transfer Guidance 
As a part of President George W. Bushï¿½s Electronic Records 
Management e-Government initiative, NARA has worked with the 
federal records management community to expand the types of 
record formats it accepts for the transfer of permanently valuable 
electronic records. These new transfer standards reflect priorities 
articulated by the records management community and will provide 
improved guidance to House and Senate archivists and records managers responsible for the preservation of legislative branch electronic 
records. 

Since 2002, NARA has worked to expand its guidance to include 
dozens of formats in six crucial areas: emails with attachments, 
scanned images of textual records, Portable Document Format (PDF) 
files, digital photographs, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), 
and content from the World Wide Web. The new guidance now 
undergoing testing and review represents a marked improvement 
over the three types of electronic records formats currently accepted 
for transfer (ASCII, EBCIDIC, and SGML-markup). No further 
expansion of transfer formats is planned until after the development 
of the Electronic Records Archives (ERA). 

D. XML Project in Senate and House 
Senate Legislative Information System (LIS) 

The LIS is a mandated system (Section 8 of the 1997 Legislative 
Appropriations Act, 2 U.S.C.123e) to provide a "comprehensive 


Senate Legislative Information System" to capture, store, manage, 
and distribute Senate documents. The Advisory Committee has 
monitored this project since its inception to ensure that the information is in formats that can be transferred to NARA for preservation. 
Since publication of the Advisory Committeeï¿½s Third Report in 2000, 
major enhancements have been developed towards implementing a 
system for authoring and exchanging legislative documents in a standard format (2 U.S.C. 181). 

In keeping with the goals of preserving information free from a 
proprietary format, a major focus has been to establish a procedure 
whereby the legislative information is created within an Extensible 
Markup Language (XML) structure. The procedure must be convenient to use and allow the document creators to draft bills according to 
the structure and style of laws as they have evolved over the years. 
The application is called the Legislative Editing in XML Application, 
or LEXA. Following requirements analysis in 2001, LEXA was developed throughout 2002 and 2003 and deployed in the Office of the 
Legislative Counsel in January 2004. In addition, records (bills, resolutions, and amendments) from the 106th through the 108th 
Congresses (1999-2004) were converted to the new XML format but 
with much technical difficulty. The conversion software cannot produce an historically accurate version of the documents, but it can create the XML so that the whole or parts of documents can be used to 
draft a subsequent document in XML. 

In 2005 approximately 80 percent of introduced and reported bills 
were produced in XML. Other documents and engrossed and 
enrolled bills are still produced utilizing the old software. LEXA will 
be introduced to other offices including the Enrolling Clerk and committees, probably beginning with the Senate Appropriations 
Committee. More document types will be added, such as committee 
reports, hearings, and eventually work from the clerks who prepare 
the journals, calendars, and Congressional Record. The LEXA system 
does maintain various versions of bills allowing easy tracking of the 
evolution of a bill. 

The production and exchange of XML documents is a joint effort of 
the Senate, House of Representatives, Government Printing Office 
(GPO), and Library of Congress. Legislative branch XML standards 
are still evolving and each organization is handling individual needs 
while collaborating on the common standards so that documents can 
be exchanged. The electronic XML document goes to GPO where the 
paper copy is produced by converting the document back to the old 
format for composition through Microcomp, GPOï¿½s proprietary software. All electronic documents are sent to the Library of Congress 


where they are processed for the LIS system, which is internal to the 
legislative branch, and then to the Library of Congressï¿½ THOMAS 
system where it is available to the public. The Library produces a 
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) document and pairs it with 
the Portable Document Format (PDF) document that GPO produces. 

Ultimately, when all documents are in XML, they will be displayed 
on the web and accessible to the public. When all data is in XML and 
when the search engine for XML is perfected, the publicï¿½s ability to 
search the data as a single system will be greatly enhanced. At some 
point, the database could become so large that the search process 
could slow. At that point, selected files may be saved and archived at 
NARA. 

House Document Management System Initiative 

The House Document Management System (House DMS) 
Initiative represents an enterprise-wide approach to the creation, distribution, and maintenance of legislative information. Managed by 
the Office of the Clerkï¿½s Legislative Computer Systems department, it 
endeavors to make improvements in the cost, accuracy, timeliness, 
efficiency of the process, and establishment of common data standards for the exchange of legislative information. The primary focus 
to date has been the transformation, creation, and exchange of House 
documents using the industry-based standards approach of 
Extensible Markup Language (XML). This includes customizing an 
XML editor for the creation of bills, resolutions, and amendments. 
The system also allows the transmission of documents in XML format 
to the Government Printing Office (GPO) and the Library of Congress 
(LOC). The initiative is rooted in a 1996 directive from the chairmen 
of the Committee on House Oversight (the Committee on House 
Administration) and the Senate Committee on Rules and 
Administration to the Clerk of the House and Secretary of the Senate, 
who work together toward establishing common data standards for 
the exchange of legislative information. (See also Public Law 104197). 

Following the "1999 House-Senate Bills, Resolutions, and 
Amendments XML Feasibility Study," the Clerkï¿½s DMS project team 
extensively customized an XML editor for use by House staff. The 
editor was first made available to the House Office of Legislative 
Counsel (HOLC) in December 2001. In the earlier phases of the project, the editor was used to draft simple House bills and resolutions. 
As the operation progressed, congressional documents with more 
complex formats that conform to current and historic styles for laws 
have been added to the editorï¿½s functionality. HOLC drafts over 98% 


of their introduced and reported non-appropriations-related bills, 
resolutions, and amendments in XML. In 2005 the XML editor was 
deployed to the Enrolling Clerks and Bill Clerks in the House Office 
of Legislative Operations. The Enrolling Clerks prepare engrossed 
and enrolled measures in XML, and the Bill Clerks are able to make 
hand-corrections to introduced measures before they are exchanged 
with GPO. All XML documents are exchanged and processed by 
GPO and LOC. When the XML editor cannot be used, documents are 
drafted or edited in the original GPO proprietary system. 

As described under the Senate Legislative Information System 
(LIS) section of this report, the production and exchange of legislative 
XML documents is a joint effort. Collaboration on common standards is part of an ongoing effort to utilize the same tools, such as 
those employed for converting files from XML to the GPO proprietary format and creating and editing tables. 

A common style sheet is used to display XML measures on the 
Web. As of October 2005, more than 6,200 XML measures are on the 
LOCï¿½s websites (THOMAS/LIS). Before the XML documents are 
transferred from GPO to the LOC, metadata is added to the XML document to provide better search and retrieval capabilities. The current 
metadata standard used is Dublin Core (http://dublincore.org). 

Work has begun on formatting requirements to produce the House 
portion of the Congressional Record in XML. To date, House Roll Call 
data in XML is transferred to GPO for inclusion in the Congressional 
Record. Future plans include the creation and exchange of additional 
legislative documents in XML, including conference report language, 
appropriation amendments, committee reports and hearings, House 
calendars, and journals. 

An additional goal of the House DMS Initiative is to integrate document information (House DMS) with the House legislative tracking 
system (LIMS) in order to reduce redundant data entry and improve 
the quality of information that is exchanged among the various 
organizations and systems during the legislative process. Internally, 
the interface between DMS and LIMS is called "Legislative Transfer, 
Reuse, and Document Exchange," or LegisTRADE. 

To begin these efforts, the Bill Clerksï¿½ component of LegisTRADE 
was developed and deployed in 2002. This system has decreased the 
amount of time needed for the nightly processing of introduced 
measures, improved accuracy of data entry into LIMS, and eliminated the need for GPO to rekey information. The second effort was the 
development and deployment of the Daily Digest in XML in 2005. 
The new application utilizing the XML editor retrieves data from 
LIMS to create an almost automatic Daily Digest. This new applica


tion eliminates the manual processes used to create the Daily Digest, 
allows the Digest Clerk to concentrate on content as opposed to format, increases the accuracy of the information, and reduces the 
dependency on external sources of information to validate the Daily 
Digest. 

E. Senate Committee on Homeland Security 
and Governmental Affairs (HSGA) 
Electronic Archiving Project 
During August 2004 history was made when the Homeland 
Security and Governmental Affairs Committee determined to 
embark on an electronic archiving project. Prompted by the daunting 
task of conducting ten hearings during the August recess to prepare 
for the Homeland Security legislation, the committee worked with 
NARA to develop a protocol for electronic document archiving to 
accommodate the staff who would not have time to print and file 
documents. Because of the compressed time span and the numerous 
individuals detailed to the committee for the hearings, it was feared 
that significant documents could be lost. 

The Chief Clerk, committee archivist, and systems administrator 
devised a strategy to capture the e-mails, attachments, and other electronic documents. The staff and detailees were briefed and encouraged to move significant messages to the archives folder where the 
archivist would convert the emails to HTML and categorize them by 
topic. Personal emails were not included. The archivist also accessed 
the network drives of majority and minority staff to archive relevant 
memos, analysis papers, power point presentations, and spreadsheets, which ordinarily would not be saved. The staff arranged and 
combined these documents with emails to provide a full spectrum of 
issues concerning homeland security and intelligence reform. After 
reviewing all the files, the archivist transferred them to CD-ROMs, 
and the discs were transferred to NARA. In 2024 and 2025, when the 
documents will be opened, the public should not experience any difficulty in seeking and accessing the pertinent materials due to the 
exemplary work performed by the HSGA Archivist. It is hoped that 
other committees will adopt these procedures. On the recommendation of the Advisory Committee, a "lessons learned" report was distributed to all Senate committees (see Appendix A). 

F. Senate Document Management System for Senate Offices 
The Senate Document Management System is responsible for 
printing, graphics, and direct mail operations within the Office of the 


Senate Sergeant at Arms and provides archiving services to the 
Senate community. The office recently added a web-based system 
that allows offices to search and retrieve documents right from the 
desktop. At present the system is retaining electronic data for twenty Senate offices, with fourteen using the system on a daily basis. 
Large amounts of data can be stored in the document management 
system. When a senator retires, the office data is saved on CDs or 
DVDs and can be sent to the Memberï¿½s designated repository for 
preservation and access to researchers. 

The system is an open-source system fully secured and maintained 
by the Senate Computer Center. Documents containing metadata 
and indexing terms that include pointers to the actual documents can 
be scanned and placed into the system. The system also can generate 
microfilm in addition to CDs thus creating long-term preservation 
copies of documents, which complies with NARA standards for 
transporting databases to NARA. 

The Senate Historical Office is using the system to produce security back-up copies of its historical subject files. Committees have used 
the system to produce security copies of their mark-up transcripts 
and other documents. 

Other Senate Committee Electronic Archiving 

In August 2005 the Senate Judiciary Committee experimented with 
electronic archiving of emails relating to the first Supreme Court 
nomination of the Internet age. Senate and committee archivists and 
systems administrators devised a filing scheme for emails whereby 
the archivists and systems administrators setup pre-designated filing 
categories for the staff to follow. Once the nomination had been completed, the protocol called for staff to archive relevant emails in electronic format. The design of the operation facilitated the review of 
the nomination and streamlined staff filing of relevant documents. 


III. PRESERVATION OF AND ACCESS TO 
MEMBERSï¿½ RECORDS 
During the past six years the Advisory Committee has focused 
attention on improving the preservation of and access to Membersï¿½ 
records and has served as a catalyst for several significant projects. 

A. Congressional Papers Roundtable 
of the Society of American Archivists 
and the Advisory Committee Task Forces 
Following the publication of the Third Report of the Advisory 
Committee in December 2000 containing recommendations aimed at 
strengthening the management and preservation of Membersï¿½ 
papers, the Congressional Papers Roundtable (CPR) of the Society of 
American Archivists held a forum at the U.S. Capitol on August 29, 
2001. The forum looked at two of the Advisory Committeeï¿½s recommendations: "Improving Archival Practices on Capitol Hill" and 
"Developing Public Policy Research Centers." Two panels of experts 
in each of the areas presented commentary and insights. The audience and panelists then broke into two focus groups to devise recommendations. The forum was very well attended by both archivists 
and congressional staff. 

Final recommendations included: 

First: To facilitate significant improvements in archival/records 

management. 

 Encourage offices to add professional archivists or records 
managers to their staffs, or train current staff to perform the 
duties. 
 Provide Members with a sample archivist/records manager 
job description to facilitate hiring such professionals. 
 Enlist the support of Members with staff archivists to generate 
interest among other Members. 
 Devise records management baseline criteria for offices to use 
to evaluate their effectiveness. 
 Provide records management briefings to new offices. 
 Urge Members to designate a repository early in their careers 
in order to commence a cooperative relationship designed to 
strengthen records management and preserve important 
records. 

Second: To promote a better understanding of the vital role that 
public policy centers play in making congressional collections 
available for researchers and in providing public programs. 

 Develop a working definition of "public policy center." 
 Create a roster of such centers. 
 Enlist the help of state historical records advisory boards to 
encourage the development of centers in states that lack them. 
 Produce a pamphlet for new Members explaining their role in 
preserving their papers. 
 Create a task force to explore ways to fund preservation of congressional and public policy documentation. 
In December 2001 the Advisory Committee responded by creating 
two task forces. One group reviewed records management recommendations while the other examined public policy center proposals. 
The task force leaders reported to the Advisory Committee in June 
2002. The records management task force produced a sample position description for a congressional staff archivist/records manager, a 
baseline records management standards checklist, and a pamphlet 
for new Members. All of the recommendations have been incorporated into the records management guidance provided to Members 
during orientation and subsequently to staff through the handbooks 
and briefings. The public policy task force put forth the proposal that 
a nonpublic entity outside of the Advisory Committee would be better suited to devise a definition and roster of public policy centers, 
and it felt that the Congressional Papers Roundtable (CPR) would be 
the suitable organization to work on these projects. 

Subsequently, the CPR produced a working definition of public 
policy centers that was incorporated into the guidance given to 
Members regarding selecting an archival repository. The CPR also is 
working on management guidelines for congressional collections, the 
purpose of which is to present standards by which a repository can 
measure its success in acquiring, preserving, and making use of congressional collections. A roster of repositories specializing in congressional documentation was created and is used to identify likely 
repositories for deposit of Membersï¿½ papers. 

B. Member Records Management Guidance 
The Office of History and Preservation (OHP) in the House of 
Representatives has revamped the records management manual distributed to Member offices. Previously the manual was titled 
"Closing a Congressional Office." OHP wanted to have a records 
management manual that would incorporate all facets of a Memberï¿½s 
career. Additional topics covered include setting up a filing scheme 


and the availability of courtesy storage facilities for sitting Members. 
The title of the manual is Records Management Manual for Members of 
the U.S. House of Representatives. Separate brochures for Members 
have been developed on specific topics, for example, selecting a 
repository library and preparing a deed of gift. These publications 
are currently being reviewed by the Clerk of the Houseï¿½s Office of 
Publications Services. Once approved, the manual and brochures 
will be professionally printed. The current records management 
manual for Members is available in hard copy and on the Clerkï¿½s 
internal website. 

As an additional service, OHP provides consultations with 
Member offices upon request. Members receive a letter from the 
Clerk offering archival assistance when they announce their intention 
to leave the House or have not been re-elected. Enclosed with the letter is OHPï¿½s records management manual for Members and contact 
information for follow-up discussions. The House Archivist has participated in the Chief Administrative Officerï¿½s (CAO) Transition 
Briefings for departing Member staff as well as a session for departing Members titled "Life After Congress" organized by the U. S. 
Association of Former Members of Congress. For the first time at the 
beginning of the 109th Congress, the Clerk sent letters and a copy of 
the records management manual to new Members offering archival 
assistance and consultation sessions if requested. 

The Senate continues to publish the Records Management Handbook 
for United States Senators and Their Archival Repositories together with 
an accompanying pamphlet, Senatorsï¿½ Papers: Management and 
Preservation Guidelines. These basic resources are complemented by 
an Opening a Senate Office Checklist that is distributed to newly elected Senators during orientation. Additionally, when a Member 
announces retirement, the office and the repository receive a Closing 
a Senate Office Checklist that provides comprehensive guidance including a time-line, detailed instructions and forms for archiving electronic records, and other information concerning scheduling, electronic document archiving, and equipment returns. The Senate 
Archivist meets with individual offices to review the procedures and 
conducts a basic records management seminar. 

The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2005 contains a provision 
whereby departing Senators can request funds to pay expenses for 
transporting their official records and papers from the District of 
Columbia to any location designated by the Senator in his/her home 
state. These procedures are in conformity with those employed by 
the House and encourage the preservation of records. Since the 
expense to ship the collection does not come from the individual 


office account, Senators no longer need to choose between shipping 
their papers and paying office staff. 

C. The Association of Centers for the Study of Congress (ACSC) 
The Center for Legislative Archives Director suggested in 2002 that 
a conference of congressional policy centers be held. The Director 
met with an eager audience of congressional policy centers directors 
and members of the Congressional Papers Roundtable (CPR) who 
were thinking about establishing their repositories as congressional 
policy centers. It was a natural evolution of ideas and projects of the 
Advisory Committee, CPR members, and a growing number of congressional policy center directors looking for ways to connect with 
and learn from each other. The Advisory Committee has followed 
the development of this organization with much interest because it 
had long regarded Membersï¿½ papers as worthy of preservation due to 
their value for the study of Congressï¿½ role in the creation of public 
policy. 

The initial gathering was held during May 2003 in Shepherdstown, 
West Virginia, at the Robert C. Byrd Center for Legislative Studies. 
Meeting attendees discussed possible goals of the organization. 

These included: 

 Collaborate on educational programs. 
 Collaborate with American Political Science Association, U.S. 
Association of Former Members of Congress, Congressional 
Papers Roundtable, American Historical Association, 
Organization of American History to produce standards for 
Members papers. 
 Sponsor a research conference. 
 Identify research topics and jointly build a collection of on-line 
documents. 
 Encourage former Members of Congress to be speakers. 
 Create a web site with links to other centers. 
 Support broad policy studies. 
 Explore ways to find more resources for the community of congressional centers. 
 Promote the value of centers to Members of Congress and 
inform them of the mission and programs offered by centers. 
 Participate in programs that take advantage of the Capitol 
Visitor Center. 

At the annual meeting of the Congressional Papers Roundtable 
(CPR) in 2003, CPR members also discussed possible areas where an 
association of centers could be effective. 

These included: 

 Encourage the development of centers in every state because 
congressional collections at present are not geographically dispersed to all areas of the country. 
 Compile guidelines on how to develop a center in the event 
there are institutions interested in developing congressional 
resources. 
 Assist with improving funding sources, or become involved 
with seeking funds, because funding for preservation of congressional collections is so uneven and irregular. 
 Collaborate on specific educational programs. 
 Investigate integrating the CPR congressional repository 
guidelines into an associationï¿½s programs. 
Participants at the Shepherdstown conference established a steering committee which was charged with six tasks: 

 Develop a mission statement (reproduced in Appendix X). 
 Recommend a name. 
 Establish a listserv. 
 Set goals and objectives. 
 Develop a business model. 
 Create a website. 
The steering committee formulated a mission statement during the 
initial meetings and named itself the Association of Centers for the 
Study of Congress (ACSC). During the initial meeting, the committee adopted a set of by-laws, and at a second conference held in May 
2004 at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, the committee elected a slate of officers. The committee also created a new web-
site (http://www.congresscenters.org), and defined goals and objectives. By the third conference, held in May 2005, the membership had 
grown from 29 at the initial meeting to 47 registrants representing 29 
centers. A committee of the ACSC is pursuing filing with the IRS for 
501c(3) tax exempt status, and a second committee is investigating 
the implementation of a dues structure to fund future conferences 
and other activities. A third committee is compiling a list of educational products available from member centers in an effort to organize various resources. The conferences have been notable for bringing together the finest historians and political scientists writing and 
teaching congressional history and giving them the opportunity to 
apprise ACSC of ways to improve access to resources. 


One very high priority of the ACSC is to work on ways to improve 
funding both for the preservation of congressional collections and to 
improve access to them. To further these goals, officials from the 
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) were invited to brief 
conference attendees on various types of grants. An ACSC committee is investigating the universe of NEH grants and will make a recommendation on how to proceed. Beginning in 2005 the ACSC has 
established itself as a viable organization that will play an important 
role in promoting a better understanding of Congress through the 
preservation and use of the actual records of Members of Congress. 
By the third conference, held in May 2005, the membership had 
grown from 29 at the initial meeting to 56 registrants representing 42 
centers. Committees were established to investigate implementation 
of a dues structure and pursue filing for 501c(3) status. Another committee is compiling a list of educational products available produced 
by member centers that could be used by other centers -- a pooling of 
resources. The conferences have been notable for bringing together 
the finest historians and political scientists writing and teaching congressional history today and giving them the opportunity to tell us 
what they need in terms of sources and how we might improve 
access to them. 

The ACSC met for the first time outside of the Washington DC 
region, at the University of Connecticut in Storrs during May 10-11, 
2006. Conference sessions covered topics such as grants available to 
research repositories, hidden riches in congressional collections, 
secrecy and classified records in Membersï¿½ papers, research value of 
constituent correspondence, processing backlogs of collections, 
donor relations, online exhibits, and online finding aids. The business meeting of the ACSC focused on conference registration fees, 
membership dues, how conferences will alternate between 
Washington, DC and a host institution, and how ACSC is filing for 
non-profit status. 


IV. NATIONAL ARCHIVES 
AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATON 
A. Building Renovation 
The renovation of the National Archives Building was essentially 
completed by the end of Fiscal Year 2005. The work included the 
replacement of all major building systems (HVAC, ductwork, plumbing, electrical distribution, fire alarm, security systems) and upgrades 
to the exhibit, public, research, and staff areas. The building was 
brought into compliance with fire and safety codes through installation of required fire dampers, as well as the sealing of hidden open 
shafts located behind walls. The completion of the project also 
brought the Archives building into compliance with accessibility 
requirements for all public, research, and staff areas, and the security 
status of public entrances was upgraded to current standards. 

Six major construction projects were required to complete the renovation. The construction started with the award of the initial demolition and swing space construction contract in February 2000, and 
was completed in September 2001. The main renovation contract was 
awarded in May 2001, and ran through September 2005. In addition, 
other contracts included the design and construction of the security 
vaults for the Charters of Freedom; the removal, restoration, and re-
hanging of the murals in the Rotunda; the construction of two electrical vaults under the Constitution Avenue lawns to facilitate the 
electrical modernization; design and installation of fiber optic lighting for the Rotunda exhibit cases, and the lighting in the Rotunda and 
the East and West Foyers. With the exception of the main renovation 
contract, all other contractors have finished their portion of the project. 

With the completion of the renovations, the public spaces and 
research rooms have been reopened and the staffs have reoccupied 
their offices. The contractor is working on correcting the "punch list," 
minor construction items that were identified during the inspection 
and acceptance process. In addition, the contractor is completing a 
$4.25 million change order that was issued to replace all of the stack 
lighting. This work had not been included in the base renovation 
because of cost issues, but NARA used repair and restoration funding provided on a yearly basis to support facility needs. The lighting 
change order is projected to be completed in the third quarter of 
Fiscal Year 2006. 

The replacement of the bronze tops in the Rotunda for the Charters 
of Freedom and replacement of the 14 side cases were deleted from 


the base renovation contract due to difficulties in meeting aesthetic 
and performance standards for these cases. The work is now proceeding on a separate track. The design of the new tops and their 
opening/closing mechanisms, as well as the supporting sub-frames, 
has been completed and is open for bids prior to manufacture and 
assembly. The initial top for the Declaration of Independence is projected to be finished early in the 2nd quarter of Fiscal Year 2006 with 
the remaining tops being completed in the 3rd quarter of Fiscal Year 
2006. The installation will be scheduled sequentially so as not to 
interfere with NARAï¿½s public programs and high visitor seasons. 

The renovation significantly improved the storage environments 
for records throughout the building. The changes to the mechanical 
systems will permit the records to be stored at the conservation recommended temperature (72ï¿½F with a maximum range of +/- 5ï¿½F) 
and humidity (a set value between 35% and 50% relative humidity, 
with a maximum range of +/- 5% from the set value) levels. All of 
the storage stacks now have a chemical filtration system. 

Congress, researchers, and the public will all benefit greatly from 
the renovated National Archives Building. The records of Congress 
are stored in an environmentally controlled records storage area with 
greatly improved fire and security systems. The modern technical 
infrastructure means more reliable elevator service and a vastly 
improved electronic access system for the public. The modern 
research and consultation rooms enable researchers to utilize all the 
newest research resources available on the Internet. Opportunities 
for exhibits, workshops, and other outreach initiatives are greatly 
expanded, and NARA can reach a wider public interested in learning 
about the importance of records and our nationï¿½s history. 

B. Report on Summer 2006 Flood 
On the evening of Sunday, June 25, record-breaking rainfall in the 
Washington, DC area caused flooding in several buildings along 
Constitution Avenue. Floodwaters entered the National Archives 
Building in the basement levels and theater. Emergency response, 
buildings maintenance, and security crews worked around the clock 
to clean, repair damage, and secure the building during the three-
week building closure. During this time, National Archives Building 
employees reported to alternate work locations. 

No records were damaged during the flood, and immediate actions 
were taken to maintain temperature and humidity levels within 
acceptable ranges while electrical crews worked to restore power and 
air-handling equipment. Stack doors remained closed to prevent 
humid air from entering records storage areas. Center for Legislative 


Archives staff were allowed limited access to process emergency 
loans to the Senate. Public exhibit areas reopened July 15; staff reoccupied the building on July 17; and researchers were allowed to 
return on July 19. Building systems and operations returned to full-
service by late August. 


30



V. THE U.S. CAPITOL VISITOR CENTER: 
HISTORY, EDUCATION 
AND INNOVATION 
The U.S. Capitol with its stately dome is recognized as an architectural treasure and an international symbol for our form of government. As the nation has grown in size and complexity, the Capitol 
has undergone numerous architectural alterations and technological 
improvements that have been incorporated into the building to 
improve congressional operations and better serve the people. 

The Capitol has been built and re-built many times. George 
Washington laid the cornerstone in 1793. The original Capitol building consisted of only the Senate wing that was first occupied by 
Congress in 1800. During the War of 1812 British troops burned the 
House and Senate wings, but by 1819 the Congress reconvened in the 
newly restored Capitol. The building was enlarged and the present 
dome built in the 1850s and 1860s. Subsequent enlargements included the Frederick Law Olmsted west terrace in the 1880s and an extension to the east front in the late 1950s and early 1960s. From the conversion of gas to electric lighting in the 1890s to the implementation 
of modern computer technology, the staff at the Capitol has attempted to modernize the building and keep pace with the technological 
needs of Congress and a growing nation. 

Throughout its constantly evolving history, the Capitol has always 
attracted visitors. In the 19th century no one could have anticipated 
the current number of tourists from the United States and other countries from around the world who would come to the nationï¿½s capital 
to witness democracy in action. More than three million people visited the Capitol in 2000 alone, a three-fold increase from the one million that visited in 1970. It became evident by the 1990s that no 19th 
century building that serves as a working office for hundreds of 
Members and their staffs was equipped to accommodate an ever 
increasing number of tourists. 

Prior to initiating the construction of the visitor center, people waited in long lines in order to tour the Capitol, had to endure adverse 
weather conditions, and lacked access to basic amenities. Visitors 
needed better services, better accessibility, more opportunities for 
education, and after the events of September 11, better security. 

A proposal for a visitor center began to crystallize in the mid-1970s 
with the issuance of a report entitled, "Toward a Master Plan for the 
United States Capitol." In 1991 Congress authorized funding for conceptual planning. The need to upgrade and provide security was 
underscored by the tragic shooting of two Capitol police officers in 


1998. An updated plan was submitted in 1999 that lead to some preliminary funding. The events of September 11 provided the impetus 
for additional funding from Congress and the groundbreaking ceremony took place in 2002. 

The architects of the CVC carefully avoided disrupting the vistas 
around the Capitol and sought to restore the original landscape 
design of Frederick Law Olmsted. The architectural plan by RTKL 
calls for a 580,000 square foot space to be constructed under the 
Capitolï¿½s east plaza. This enormous underground building on three 
levels includes the Great Hall, a 550-seat cafeteria, a 17,000 square 
foot exhibition gallery, two orientation theaters, an auditorium for 
Members addressing large groups and for after-hours programs, gift 
shops and bathrooms, and a long-needed secure, underground truck 
delivery tunnel. The CVC also includes meeting and committee 
rooms for the House and Senate. The public portion of the facility is 
capable of handling up to 4,000 people at any given time and 15,000 
or more visitors a day during peak season. 

The facility affords visitors three different ways to learn about 
Congress and the history and architecture of the Capitol. Visitors can 
avail themselves of the opportunity of watching a 12-minute orientation film by Donna Lawrence Productions. The public also can take 
a 40-minute Capitol tour and visit the exhibition gallery designed by 
Ralph Appelbaum & Associates. Both resources are designed to give 
the visitor a richer appreciation for the operations and responsibilities 
of the legislative branch in our governmental system. However, the 
Capitol itself with its collection of American art and the buildingï¿½s 
rich architectural history is really the crowning element of the whole 
experience. It is considered by many to be the single most important 
artifact of the United States. 

The exhibition gallery highlights the workings and history of 
Congress and the Capitol with original artifacts, 3-D models, videos 
and interactive programs. The heart of the exhibition gallery is a 
long, curving marble wall with inset, climate-controlled cases that 
feature the precious documents of Americaï¿½s national heritage 
retained by NARA and the Library of Congress. The area, called the 
wall of National Aspirations, will house historic documents that 
highlight the ways Congress enabled the country to achieve its goals 
in the areas of Unity, Freedom, General Welfare, Common Defense, 
Exploration and Knowledge. Due to the delicate nature of many of 
the documents, they will be rotated with other documents every four 
to six months. The first showing includes such amazing pieces as the 
Compromise of 1850 as introduced by Henry Clay, James Madisonï¿½s 
Notes on the Bill of Rights, and the Day of Infamy Speech delivered 


to Congress by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on December 8, 
1941. The rotation of documents in the exhibits would not be possible without the generous cooperation of the Center for Legislative 
Archives (NARA) and the Library of Congress. To enhance the experience of the public, the gallery will include two virtual theaters, one 
each for the House and the Senate, where visitors will be able to see 
live activities on the floor, as well as experience short programs on the 
functions and cultures of the two bodies. 

Planned to open in 2007, the CVC is now entering its final construction phase. Crews are busy installing mechanical, electrical and 
plumbing systems, erecting interior walls, and installing utility lines 
and connections to all fire and life safety systems. Masonry block 
work is nearly complete and stone masons can now be seen throughout the facility installing some of the $35 million worth of finish stone. 
The installation of the finished stone in the Great Hall is nearly complete and stonework is progressing in both orientation theaters. Later 
this fall, scaffolds will be erected throughout interior spaces to allow 
crews to complete work on ceilings, skylights and fire protection systems. In conjunction with the work inside, historic preservation contractors are re-installing the original Olmsted-designed lanterns, 
fountains and seat walls that were carefully disassembled and 
removed in 2002 to clear the way for excavation of the project site. 

When completed, the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center will welcome and 
be accessible to millions of visitors in a secure, educational, and convenient 21st century environment. The CVC will provide a dignified 
and gracious entrance to a building steeped in history where 
Members fulfill their oath and duties as set forth in Article I of the 
Constitution. 


34



VI. OUTREACH PROJECTS 
A. American Originals: Traveling Exhibit 
From 2001 to 2003 a major traveling exhibit from NARA, American 
Originals: Treasures from the National Archives, toured the country 
while the Rotunda of the National Archives Building was undergoing 
renovation. The exhibit included such milestone documents as the 
Louisiana Purchase Treaty, Thomas Edisonï¿½s patent for the light bulb, 
and John F. Kennedyï¿½s notes on his inaugural address. With the generous permission of the Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the 
Senate, the exhibit also included House and Senate treasures such as 
George Washingtonï¿½s First Inaugural Address and a petition from 
Susan B. Anthony. The exhibit toured nine cities nationwide and was 
visited by 485,939 people. During the three years the exhibit traveled, 
it appeared at the following venues: New York Public Library, New 
York, New York; Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, Chicago, Illinois; 
Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio; Jimmy Carter Presidential 
Library, Atlanta, Georgia; Union Station Kansas City, Kansas City, 
Missouri; Witte Museum, San Antonio, Texas; Los Angeles Public 
Library, Los Angeles, California; Museum of American Political Life 
at the University of Hartford, Hartford, Connecticut; and Bank One 
Center at Riverfront, Wilmington, Delaware. 

B. The National Archives Experience: Public Vaults 
One of the major accomplishments of the National Archives in the 
last six years has been the creation of the National Archives 
Experience. The new NARA museum programs links the five major 
public spaces of the National Archives Building: The Rotunda for the 
Charters of Freedom, which reopened in September of 2003; the 
William G. McGowan Theater, reopened in September, 2004; the 
"Public Vaults," opened in November, 2004; the Lawrence F. Oï¿½Brien 
Gallery for temporary exhibits, opened in December, 2004; and the 
Learning Center, scheduled to open by September, 2006. All of these 
resources were created through congressional funding and authorization to renovate the National Archives building. The project also 
benefited from the infusion of funds from public/private partnerships. The Foundation for the National Archives has raised more 
than $18 million for components of the National Archives Experience, 
including the restoration of the Rotunda murals and the construction 
of the theater and exhibits. The physical result of this expansion was 
the addition of more than 20,000 square feet of usable exhibit and 
program space. 


The benefit of these investments goes well beyond their measure in 
size and cost. Attendance in FY 2005 was 1,003,014, which was a 40% 
increase from previous years and marked the highest level of attendance in a decade. According to three separate surveys, the length of 
visits nearly tripled in comparison to a similar 1990s study and more 
than 90% of the visitors rated their experience as "very satisfied" or 
"extremely satisfied." 

The new National Archives Experience has already accomplished 
a number of important educational objectives for NARA: 

 The renovation of the Rotunda allowed NARA to continuously display all four pages of the Constitution for the first time. 
 The renovation provided NARA the space to build an exhibit 
that gives context for the Charters of Freedom, showed milestones in the creation of the Declaration of Independence, the 
Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and focused on key developments affecting the interpretation of the Charters following 
the Federal Period. 
 The McGowan Theater has become an important venue for 
providing free public lectures, programs illustrating the works 
of authors and filmmakers, and for NARA partnerships aimed 
at improving civic literacy. Over 130 programs were held in FY 
05 with an audience of over 6,000. NARA was particularly 
proud to host Senator Robert C. Byrd, Congressman Roy Blunt, 
and Congressman Steny Hoyer as the centerpiece of its 
Constitution Day programs. 
 The Oï¿½Brien Gallery has already been the site of three exhibits: 
an exhibit on presidential photography, an outreach exhibit on 
teaching with primary resources, and an exhibit on Parisï¿½ place 
in American history, created as part of the citywide presentation of "Paris on the Potomac." 
The most important innovation in the National Archives 
Experience was the creation of the "Public Vaults," NARAï¿½s first permanent, interactive exhibit. This 9,000 square foot, award winning 
venue allows visitors to journey into the stacks and vaults of the 
National Archives to see the nationï¿½s original documents and appreciate their importance in our history. Visitors can browse over 1,100 
records from all three branches of government and all of NARAï¿½s 
records centers and Presidential libraries across the nation. 
Important original records on display include George Washingtonï¿½s 
letters to Congress, the Acts of the First Congress, Abraham Lincolnï¿½s 
telegrams to his generals, and surrender documents from World War 

II. The exhibit cases give the visitor the sense of being immersed in 
the stacks and vaults of the Archives. Twenty-two computer kiosks 

allow visitors to have a hands-on experience with records, search 
immigration records like a genealogist, make a D-Day documentary, 
or become a historian and examine important congressional debates. 
With the addition of the "Public Vaults," the National Archives has 
truly become a destination for visitors of all ages and all interests. 

C. Exhibits and Films at the Capitol Visitor Center 
One of the highest priorities of the Center for Legislative Archives 
is to develop and support the educational content featured in the 
public exhibition spaces in the Capitol Visitor Center (CVC). The 
CVC provides the most visible and meaningful setting for the display 
of House and Senate records preserved at the Center. 

Center staff collaborated during the past six years with the staffs at 
the CVC, Senate Historical Office, House Office of History and 
Preservation, Office of House Historian, Library of Congress, 
Architect of the Capitol, the Smithsonian, Ralph Appelbaum and 
Associates, and Donna Lawrence Productions on this extraordinary 
project. The Centerï¿½s major contribution has been to identify House 
and Senate documents and appropriate federal records at NARA that 
best illustrate the history and accomplishments of representative government in America. 

Many others at NARA have provided support for the CVC exhibits 
including the conservators in the Office of Preservation and the 
museum specialists in the Center for the National Archives 
Experience. They reviewed case designs, mounting systems, and 
other technical exhibit issues, and their assistance will continue to be 
critical to the preparation, transport, and mounting of documents 
from NARA in the CVC. 

D. Educational Publications and Workshops 
The objective of the Centerï¿½s educational programs is to provide 
enrichment materials for instructional programs focusing on the history of Congress. The Centerï¿½s publications feature facsimile copies 
of historic House and Senate records and provide contextual material to facilitate their use. With assistance from a network of expert 
teachers and congressional scholars, and the growing expertise at the 
Center, the publications have developed into an invaluable resource 
covering congressional history over a broad expanse of time. 

The first publication, The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson, highlighted 
the significant issues and events during Jeffersonï¿½s tenure in office. 
The second publication, Our Mothers before Us: Women and Democracy, 
1789-1920, focused on womenï¿½s petitions to Congress and their active 


engagement in the nationï¿½s civic life before they gained the right to 
vote. The current publication in development, Congress and the 
Shaping of American History, a two-volume resource covering more 
than two hundred years of history, explores Congressï¿½ role in the history of representative government and new perspectives on the 
nationï¿½s history. 

The Centerï¿½s publication, Our Mothers before Us: Women and 
Democracy 1789-1920, was first published in 1998 and the initial print-
run sold out almost immediately, and a second printing was released 
in 2001. More than 4,000 copies have been distributed to public and 
private high schools in Texas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, the 
District of Columbia, and the metropolitan areas of Cleveland, 
Philadelphia, and Boston. It also has been distributed to community 
colleges in Mississippi (see Appendix B for a list of funders for both 
publications). 

The Center organized high-profile events in Louisiana and 
Mississippi to promote the distribution of Our Mothers before Us. The 
Louisiana event was held in late 2000 at the Old State Capitol in Baton 
Rouge through the gracious support and assistance of Senator John 
Breaux and Lois Breaux. The 2001 event in Mississippi was held in 
conjunction with the annual Oxford Conference for the Book on the 
campus of the University of Mississippi. The universityï¿½s Chancellor 
served as moderator for the well-attended event. 

The Centerï¿½s major outreach program has focused its efforts in 
researching and drafting the first volume of Congress and the Shaping 
of American History. The six-chapter work will explore the history of 
the House and Senate, congressional powers and Congressï¿½ relationship with the executive and judicial branches of government, and 
seminal events in American history through the Reconstruction Era. 
The goal of the publication is to provide teachers resources with a 
resource written from a congressional perspective. 

The publication features facsimiles of House and Senate records 
selected for their use in high school classrooms. Visual resource 
materials included in the publication consist of maps, charts, graphs, 
photographs, and reproductions of period art. The book incorporates 
contemporary accounts from newspapers, memoirs, and diaries to 
enable students to interact with primary documents. A narrative history of events, biographical information, and definitions of congressional processes and procedures provide general overview of the subject and helps place events and artifacts in historical context. 

Volume one is slated for printing in 2006 and will include a variety 
of instructional materials for teachers. The Foundation for the 
National Archives has secured funding for a minimum print-run for 


volume one (3,000 units) and is actively seeking state and national 
partners to distribute the publication as widely as possible. 

In conjunction with the preceding projects, the Center conducts 
teacher workshops to provide instructors with methods and aids to 
incorporate the Centerï¿½s congressional resources into existing curriculum programs. A draft of the publication was the featured educational resource at the 2004 "Institute on Congress and American 
History," a "We the People" initiative supported by the National 
Endowment for the Humanities, hosted by Humanities Texas at the 
Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum. The chapter on the 
War of 1812 was highlighted at the 2005 conference on "Teaching 
Congress and the Presidency," held at the Howard H. Baker, Jr. 
Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee, to explore the 
Constitutional responsibilities and inherent tension between the legislative and executive branches over shared powers. The instructional unit on the Compromise of 1850 was featured at the "The Coming 
of the Civil War" 2005 teaching institute hosted at the University of 
Virginia and supported by the NEH. The publication also was previewed at the 2004 annual meeting of the National Council for the 
Social Studies in a session on "Teaching about Congress." 

The Center has hosted visits from Washington-area teachers who 
receive training in the use of primary documents in the classroom as 
part of their professional development programs. In the November 
2005 issue of Social Education devoted to "Using Primary Source 
Documents to Teach Civics" staff members contributed an article to 
help teachers and students better understand Congressï¿½ legislative 
procedures. 

E. Conferences 
During the last six years the Center has participated in a number of 
conferences on Congress. In 2003 the Center was one of the principal 
organizers of the meeting where the Association of Centers for the 
Study of Congress (ACSC) was formed at the Robert C. Byrd Center, 
and in 2004 Center staff attended the second ACSC conference at the 
Woodrow Wilson Center. 

In 2005 the Center hosted sessions for the third annual meeting of 
ACSC. The ACSC promotes the preservation of material documenting the work of Congress and the personal papers of Members of 
Congress. ACSC also supports programs that make materials available for research and teaching. The ACSC currently has 42 member 
organizations located around the country and 47 representatives 
from 29 member organizations attended the conference. 


The two-day conference focused on collaborative approaches to the 
scholarly and educational communities to promote awareness and 
use of records relating to Congress. The Archivist of the United States 
welcomed the group and encouraged the association to support an 
educational mission. Panelists included historians and scholars from 
Boston University, The George Washington University, Yale 
University, and Ohio University, as well the Robert C. Byrd Center for 
Legislative Studies, the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy, 
The John Glenn Institute for Public Service and Policy, The 
Humphrey Forum, and the Richard Russell Library for Political 
Research and Studies. Panelists included representatives from the 
Senate Historical Office, NARA and the Center for Legislative 
Archives, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Architect 
of the Capitol, and the Capitol Visitor Center. 

As part of the 2005 annual meeting of the American Political 
Science Association, the largest gathering of political scientists in the 
world, the Center for Legislative Archives hosted a professional 
development session entitled "Using Archival Sources in Legislative 
Research: Choosing the Road Less Traveled." As part of their formal 
training, political scientists generally receive little if any instruction in 
the use of archival resources. In order to address the lack of instruction, the session provided an orientation to both the records of the 
House and Senate held at the Center as well as records held by various congressional archives throughout the country. Center staff participated in a panel entitled "Locating Materials and Collections: 
Center for Legislative Archives and Member Paper Collections." 
Other panelists included the Senate Historian, the Chief of the 
Houseï¿½s Office of History and Preservation, and archivists from the 
Congressman Moakley Archives and the Arizona Historical 
Foundation. 

Political scientists from several universities including The George 
Washington University, Niagara University, California State 
University, Suffolk University, Villanova University, Loyola College, 
and The College of William and Mary participated in the 2005 panel 
discussions. They provided examples of instructors in a variety of 
subject areas who successfully used archival collections, research 
strategies, the use of finding aids, archives as a teaching tool, and 
funding archival research projects in their classrooms. The group 
consensus was that congressional archives represent an untapped 
source of data for political science research. 


F. Anniversaries and Special Facsimile Packets 
To observe special anniversaries, the Center has reproduced facsimiles of historic documents from House and Senate archives and 
distributed them to Members of Congress and media outlets. 
Facsimile packets have been created to commemorate the 125th 
anniversary of Colorado statehood in 2001, the bicentennial of Ohio 
statehood in 2003, and the 175th anniversary in 2003 of the establishment of the Capitol Police. In addition, the Center has produced a 
number of specially-created facsimile packets for Members and committee staff, which feature House and Senate archival collections and 
underscore the importance of modern record-keeping. 

G. Internships 
For more than a decade, the internship program at the Center for 
Legislative Archives has provided opportunities for college students 
to work in a professional setting, develop a wide range of research 
skills, hone their writing abilities, and contribute to the Centerï¿½s educational programs. In addition to working with the Centerï¿½s official 
records of the House and Senate, interns gain experience doing 
research in original federal government records at NARA, the manuscript collections at the Library of Congress, and other repositories 
holding congressional collections. They gain an understanding of the 
multiple sources of documentation on Congress and the topics on the 
congressional research agenda requiring further study, which has led 
some to develop topics for Masterï¿½s theses and Ph.D. dissertations. 

The Center has developed partnerships with a number of universities and internship programs to expand the scope and visibility of the 
Centerï¿½s outreach projects. In 2005 Stanford University established a 
"Stanford-in-Government" fellow at the Center, which is one of 
eleven Washington-based institutions where these formal programs 
have been launched. Stanford University competitively chooses its 
fellows and funds the internships, as well as evaluates their professional experiences at the Center. In 2005 the first Stanford University 
fellow served at the Center and conducted original research to support the development of Congress and the Shaping of American History. 
Due to the success of Stanfordï¿½s program, the Center looks forward to 
hosting new fellows in the coming years. 

In recent years the Center has maintained close ties with the John 
Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy at Ohio State 
University, the Washington Center for Academic Internships, and the 
Washington Internship Program. Representatives from the Center 


have attended intern fairs at the University of Tennessee and George 
Mason University to promote the Centerï¿½s internship opportunities. 

Since the last Advisory Committee report in 2000, the Center has 
hosted 30 interns from a variety of colleges and universities, including undergraduates from Columbia University, University of North 
Carolina at Chapel Hill, Yale University, Aurora College, Grinnell 
College, Muhlenberg College, Mount Holyoke College, University of 
California at Santa Cruz, McGill University, University of Texas at 
Austin, Princeton University, Bryn Mawr College, Johns Hopkins 
University, Bates College, University of California at Los Angeles, 
Hiram College, Cornell University, Brown University, Stanford 
University, and Duke University. Graduate students from the 
University of Wyoming and the John Glenn Institute at Ohio State 
University also have volunteered as interns. Information about the 
Centerï¿½s internship program can be found on the Centerï¿½s website. 


VII. STATUS OF RECOMMENDATIONS 
FROM THE FIRST THREE 
ADVISORY COMMITTEE REPORTS 
AND ANALYSIS OF 
RESOURCE REQUIREMENTS 
A. Maximizing Documentation of the Legislative Process. 
1. Assess the informational and evidential values of congressional 
committee records. 
Status: The Center for Legislative Archives, the House Office of 
History and Preservation, and the Senate Archivist are exchanging information concerning modern congressional records to 
ensure adequate documentation of committee activities. As part 
of this process, the Center prepares an annual compilation of 
records transferred from Senate committees for the Senate 
Archivist, and this annual accounting identifies any gaps in 
records series. The Centerï¿½s records description project provides 
periodic opportunities to evaluate the quality of documentation 
in records housed at the Center. 

In 2004 the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration 
asked each committee to submit a report on its archiving activities 
as part of committeesï¿½ request for appropriations. These reports 
provide a timely opportunity for the Senate Archivist and committee clerks to address records issues to ensure full and adequate 
documentation of committee activities. 

2. Evaluate the archival impact of technology on congressional documentation. 
Status: The National Archives Electronic Records Archives 
(ERA) will ensure the long-term preservation of electronic records 
free from hardware and software dependency. The 9/11 
Commission records present a challenge of preserving records in 
a variety of formats that include document management systems, 
e-mails with attachments, and digital video and audio records. 

3. Identify and survey congressional electronic records systems. 
Status: Offices in the Senate and House will continue to inventory congressional electronic records systems. The National 
Archives will harvest websites from the 109th Congress in 2006. 

4. Develop electronic records guidelines and standards. 
Status: The National Archives and other agencies have developed electronic records guidelines and standards, which have 


been included in House and Senate congressional records management manuals. The National Archives has expanded the 
records formats it will accept for transferring historically critical 
electronic records. 

5. Assess value of e-mail. 
Status: As part of the National Archivesï¿½ e-Gov initiative and in 
cooperation with other Federal agencies, the National Archives 
has issued guidance intended to supplement existing requirements for transferring electronic records to NARA. This guidance 
expands currently acceptable formats to allow the transfer of e-
mail messages and their attachments. 

6. Work closely with the Electronic and Special Media Records 
Services Division to preserve and copy electronic records to stable media. 
Status: The Center for Legislative Archives collects and inventories electronic records received from House and Senate committees. The staff of the Electronic and Special Media Records 
Services Division analyzes the records for conversion to more stable media. The ERA will assure their long-term preservation. 

7. Develop on-site capability for electronic access and reference. 
Status: On-site public access to the Internet is available at workstations in the new Robert Warner Research Center at the National 
Archives. 

8. Survey, schedule, and accession records from Legislative Support 
Agencies. 
Status: From 2001 to 2006, the Center for Legislative Archives 
accessioned 370 cubic feet of records from legislative branch support agencies (Congressional Budget Office, Government Printing 
Office, and Government Accountability Office). The Center currently preserves and makes available 45,505 cubic feet of records 
from these agencies. In addition, the National Archives is working with the Congressional Research Service to create a records 
schedule and will transfer records in the future. 

9. Provide records management assistance and obtain records from 
political party policy committees, congressional campaign committees, Legislative Support Organizations, and key caucuses. 
Status: The Center for Legislative Archives will assist these 
organizations on records issues to ensure the preservation of their 
permanently valuable records at the appropriate repository. In 
2004 the Center accessioned over 600 cubic feet of textual records 
and over a terabyte of electronic data from the National 


Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, the 9/11 
Commission. 

10. Solicit records from prominent congressional committee staff 
members. 
Status: The Center for Legislative Archives assists the House 
and Senate Archivists in the review and evaluation of the papers 
of prominent staff members to recommend their preservation at 
the appropriate archival repository. 

11.Encourage development of Congressional Oral History Projects 
by archival institutions for purposes of documentation and collections develop and collect oral history interviews and research 
interviews, and make them available on the Internet. 

Status: The Center has placed online 116 oral history interviews 
of Members and staff conducted by Distinguished University 
Professor Emeritus Richard F. Fenno, Jr. of the University of 
Rochester. The Center will continue to accept and place online 
valuable research notes and oral history interviews conducted by 
congressional scholars who wish to donate their interviews to the 
Center. 

12. Acquire interviews from U.S. Association of Former Members of 
Congress at the Library of Congress. 
Status: The Center encourages and supports the efforts of the 
Association of Centers for the Study of Congress to place oral history interviews of Members online, including the interviews 
deposited at the Library of Congress. 

13. Encourage Members of Congress, prior to retirement or after six 
years of service, to begin devoting specific and dedicated 
resources to strengthen records management and establish preliminary intellectual controls over the records prior to their transfer. 
Status: The Senate and House Archivists continue to work with 
Members of Congress to improve records management within 
Membersï¿½ offices. 

14. Endorse the development of statewide Public Policy Centers that 
include a strong archival component with a focus on political and 
public policy documentation. 
Status: The creation of the Association of Centers for the Study 
of Congress (ACSC) has contributed greatly to bringing historians, political scientists, and archivists together to focus on the 
preservation of Membersï¿½ papers and their use by scholars and 
educators. 


15. Encourage congressional committees to hire professional 
archivists to assist with records management and archiving projects. 
Status: A job description for archivists was produced as a result 
of the Advisory Committeeï¿½s Third Report. Since that time, four 
Senate committees have hired professional archivists to manage 
records and provide archival expertise. 

B. Preservation Priorities. 
1. Irradiation Issue. 
Status: The Advisory Committee recognizes that the irradiation 
of congressional mail is a continuing preservation problem and 
encourages the Legislative Mail Task Force to investigate new 
technologies which properly irradiate but cause less damage to 
congressional mail. 

2. Ensure preservation of records in all formats. 
Status: The Center for Legislative Archives works with the 
preservation, special media, and electronic records offices in the 
National Archives to ensure that congressional records are preserved in all formats. 

3. Work to preserve and transfer to the Electronic and Special Media 
Records Services Division special media records found in textual 
records and create a special media data base for those records. 
Status: Center for Legislative Archives regularly transfers special media records such as audio, video, and DVD to the 
Electronic and Special Media Records Services Division at the 
National Archives. The Center maintains a detailed finding aid 
for transferred records. 

4. Monitor technical issues related to videotapes of floor proceedings. 
Status: The Center for Legislative Archives and other units in 
the National Archives, including the ERA project, are involved in 
planning for digital transmissions of floor proceedings and committee hearings from the House and Senate. 

5. Systematically locate, segregate, and perform conservation work 
on valuable congressional records. 
Status: The National Archives Document Conservation Lab 
continues to provide essential preservation services to the Center 
and professional guidance and assistance to the CVC project staff. 
The Conservation Lab played a critical role in the move of the leg


islative treasures from Archives I during the renovation. It continues to examine and treat documents selected for exhibition in 
the CVC exhibits, including some of the most valuable records in 
House and Senate holdings such as George Washingtonï¿½s first 
Inaugural Address and the Monroe Doctrine. The lab has also created special boxes and housings for bound volumes and the 
Clifford Berryman political cartoon collection. 

6. Complete filming of the records of the first fourteen Congresses. 
Status: In 1995, the Center temporarily halted this microfilming 
project to explore whether digitization would be a feasible and 
cost-effective alternative. The Center concluded that digitization 
of this volume of records was beyond its means and resumed the 
microfilming project in 2001. To date, the Center has completed 
filming the records of the first nine Congresses, House records 
from the 10th Congress, and Senate records from the 11th 
Congress. The records from the 10th Senate are currently being 
filmed. The Centerï¿½s digitization efforts have been focused on 
creating digital images of all treasure vault items and of documents that will be displayed in the CVC and other venues. 

7. Holding maintenance work should focus on records of the 84th to 
91st Congresses (1955-1971) and the thermofax records in those 
series. 
Status: Over the past six years, the Center has performed holdings maintenance and replaced thermofax copies within 4,800 
cubic feet of House and Senate records. In total, Center staff has 
screened over 8,500 cubic feet of records since 1996 to address the 
problem of rapidly deteriorating and unstable media in records 
from the 84th to the 91st Congresses, when the thermofax process 
was in use. The staff is currently working its way through the 
90th Congress records and the records of the House Un-American 
Activities Committee, which were opened in June 2001 and have 
become one of the most highly used series by researchers. 

8. Have preservation work done on oversized records. 
Status: Conservation work at the National Archives continues 
on oversized congressional records, focusing on maps and other 
large-scale items found among textual holdings that require flattening and placement in appropriate housings. The Conservation 
staff has recently created custom housing for the Clifford K. 
Berryman cartoons from the U.S. Senate Collection. 


9. Have preservation work done on bound volumes 
Status: Postponed. Because of the demands on the conservation laboratories during the renovation of the National Archives 
Building, preservation work on bound volumes has been postponed until the completion of the renovation. 

10. Develop a check-list of preservation criteria for Members who 
wish to donate their papers to a research institution and recommend that these criteria be made available to grant-making agencies to give them a standard for assessing grant applications they 
may receive for preserving particular congressional collections. 
Status: A checklist was developed as a result of the Advisory 
Committeeï¿½s Third Report. 

11.Continue to develop Document Type Definitions (DTDs) for legislative documents and Extensible Markup Language (XML) for 
data exchange throughout the legislative branch and as a means 
for preserving electronic records. 

Status: The production and exchange of XML documents is a 
joint effort of the Senate, House of Representatives, Government 
Printing Office (GPO), and Library of Congress. Legislative 
branch XML standards are still evolving and each organization is 
handling individual needs while collaborating on the common 
standards so that documents can be exchanged. 

12. Have a GS-12 conservator and conservator aid hired and dedicated solely to congressional records preservation work. 
Status: Complete. The National Archives Preservation Office 
has dedicated one full-time equivalent position to work on holdings of the Center for Legislative Archives. Conservators with a 
wide range of expertise and special skills work on the records of 
Congress as needed. 

C. Access and Reference. 
1. Digitize selected parts of the holdings and make available on the 
Internet. 
Status: A selection of congressional records is digitized and has 
been posted on the Center for Legislative Archives website. 
Additional digitized images are available to researchers by 
request. 


2. Work with congressional offices to document and preserve 
Membersï¿½ websites. 
Status: The National Archivesï¿½ web harvest is becoming the 
most standardized way to capture the websites of congressional 
offices at two-year intervals. 

3. Continue the Standing Committees History Project. 
Status: The Center for Legislative Archives has completed short 
committee histories for every standing and select committee for 
which records are open. These are available on-line in the 
National Archivesï¿½ Archival Research Catalog (ARC). The 
Committee Resource Guides (CRG) series is the online successor 
to the Guide to the Records of the United States House of 
Representatives at the National Archives and the Guide to the Records 
of the United States Senate at the National Archives. For each standing committee, the CRG includes a concise history, descriptions of 
recently-opened records, names of chairmen and dates of tenure, 
a list of subcommittees, and a bibliography of recent publications 
relating to the committee. The CRG enable House and Senate 
committees to monitor open archived records, provide 
researchers a preview of available committee records, and are the 
primary means for the Center to maintain intellectual control of 
recently-opened committee records. 

4. Prepare documentary publications. 
Status: The Senate Historical Office has an active program to 
produce documentary publications including the recently issued 

Executive Sessions of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on 
Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations (McCarthy 
Hearings 1953-54), 2003. 

5. Declassify records. 
Status: The Center responds to researcher requests for access to 
classified information in congressional records by referring 
records to the appropriate executive branch agency for declassification review under the provisions of Executive Order 12958 as 
amended. 

6. Create an information clearinghouse for the history of Congress. 
Status: The Center for Legislative Archives maintains the 
"Congressional Repositories at Archival Institutions" web pages, 
an alphabetical listing of repositories and congressional collections with links to repositoriesï¿½ websites and finding aids. 


7. Develop a Congressional Research Center with links to off-site 
websites and databases with information about Congress. 
Status: The renovated Congressional Research Center will provide Internet access for researchers to congressional resources and 
repositories housing Membersï¿½ papers. 

8. Acquire book collections on congressional history. 
Status: Beginning with the acquisition of the collections of John 
Elleff and Roger Davidson, the Center has built a library of 
approximately 3,000 books on congressional history. With the 
completion of the National Archives Building renovation, the 
library is located adjacent to the Central Research Room and the 
Congressional Research Center. The Center will continue to pursue acquisition of other collections of retired congressional scholars through its ties with the academic community and with the 
assistance of members of the Advisory Committee. 

D. Outreach. 
1. Create an educational resource project on the history of Congress 
utilizing document facsimiles. 
Status: Volume one of Congress and the Shaping of American 
History is underway. Completed units have been reviewed by historians, congressional scholars, and educators; and the units have 
been featured at teaching institutes and workshops. This resource 
is slated for publication in 2006. 

2. Encourages development and expansion of on-line exhibits documenting congressional history by NARA, the CVC, the Library of 
Congress, and other archival repositories. 
Status: The newly redesigned National Archives website features an ever-increasing number of on-line exhibits. The Center 
for Legislative Archives regularly features on its website significant legislative records under "Featured Documents." Plans are 
under development at the CVC to feature exhibits and education 
activities on their website. ACSC member institutions are exploring a collaborative approach to create an on-line collection of congressional materials including official records and personal 
papers. 

3. Create Center webpage. 
Status: Completed. Although this project was completed prior 
to the Advisory Committeeï¿½s Third Report, NARAï¿½s webpage 
underwent two redesigns. 


4. Continue to search and catalogue the records of Congress for state 
and local history. 
Status: Reference and outreach activities continue to identify 
significant documents related to the history of states and localities. Selected documents have been featured on special tours of 
the Center for Legislative Archives and reproduced as facsimiles 
for Members of Congress and other guests. 


52



APPENDIX A: 

The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee 
Electronic Archiving Project Report of Elisabeth Butler, 
Archivist, Committee on Homeland Security 
and Governmental Affairs 

When the Committee on Governmental Affairs began a national 
intelligence overhaul in late July 2004, Senate Archivist Karen Paul 
and I discussed the fact that because of the short time span allotted to 
this major legislation, staffers and temporary assistants would probably use and produce more electronic records such as emails than 
paper records. Archiving electronic records has been a longstanding 
challenge, but the historic intelligence reform effort brought this 
problem into greater focus. 

At a meeting with the Chief Clerk, it was determined to alert all 
staff to the need to file all relevant emails and attachments into 
archive folders on Microsoft Outlook. Further, staff was asked to file 
all relevant documents on their H drives into folders. All staff members were notified at the termination of their committee service that 
the material on the H drive would be appraised and arranged by the 
archivist in preparation for its transfer to the Archives. 

The committeeï¿½s Systems Administrator gave me a small software 
program to convert emails saved by staffers to HTML so I could read, 
appraise, and transfer them to CDs. The National Archives came to 
review our procedures and requested that we convert the word processing files, which were in many different software formats, into 
PDF. This has established an electronic record format "protocol" for 
Senate committees to follow. 

The committeeï¿½s archiving project has reinforced the fact that new 
technologies have expanded the definition of "record" beyond the 
traditional paper sources. The material I found in the emails, attachments, and on staffsï¿½ H drives documented issue analysis, 
staff/agency relationships, and input that does not consistently 
appear in personal papers. This reveals that staff increasingly prefer 
to use computers for most of their correspondence and memos, and 
that a great deal of official Senate records remain in computer files. 
Since this trend will continue to increase, it will become more problematic to rely solely on printed documents to record the work of 
committee staffers. 

The archiving system for electronic records as developed by the 
Committee on Governmental Affairs and approved by the Archives 
is not complicated and is an extension of traditional archiving proce


dures. The program requires a staff orientation process, staff teamwork with email and word processing management, regular follow-
ups with staffers, the oversight by a Systems Administrator, and optimally a professional archivist on staff. It was also helpful to have staff 
familiar with the concept of archiving their records. My committee 
had two previous archivists, and we have a Chief Clerk whose influence is critical. 

I think other committees can learn from my experience. Chief 
Clerks, as non-designated personnel, should understand how committees use and produce records in order to determine the best 
archiving strategies. They should help staffers understand their obligations to preserve all types of documents. Systems Administrators 
are essential because of their knowledge and daily interactions with 
staff concerning email storage and document conversions. 

Electronic archiving is necessary to comply with law 44 USC 2118 
and Senate Standing Rules XI and XXVI. As the Governmental 
Affairs Committee project has demonstrated, proper records management is essential to preserve committee history, and the protocol 
is a practical computer space management system. Archiving emails 
and electronic documents saves critical computer space and allows 
staff to create new files for subsequent congressional sessions. 
Additionally, properly archived electronic records afford staffers an 
organized reference tool that improves office efficiency. The committee wants to stress the need to have a knowledgeable, responsible 
individual on staff in order to ensure the preservation of all relevant 
and substantive records. Some committees might require separate 
record managers for Republican and Democratic staffers. Such an 
arrangement ultimately brings credit to the committee as a responsible, orderly, and efficient organization. 


APPENDIX B 

FUNDING SOURCES 

The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson, 1801-1809 

The Centerï¿½s first educational document publication has had two 
printings totaling 6,000 units, and has been distributed to public and 
private high schools in ten states: Arizona, Delaware, District of 
Columbia, Mississippi, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, 
Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. This publication is currently out of 
print. 

FUNDING SOURCES 

Thomas Jefferson University Wells Fargo Foundation 
Jefferson Bank Tremont Trust 

U.S. West Foundation Cafritz Foundation 
Clark Foundation Steele Foundation 
ARCO Foundation Samuel S. Johnson Foundation 
TRW Foundation Harold Simmons Foundation 
PacificCorp Phil Hardin Foundation 
Western Communications Ms. Jeannette Cantrell Rudy 
JCPenny (Individual) 
Frito-Lay, Inc. Mr. and Mrs. Albert Small 
(Individual) 


Our Mothers Before Us: Women and Democracy, 1789-1920 

The Centerï¿½s second educational document publication is in its second printing and has been distributed to public and private high 
schools in Boston, Massachusetts; Cleveland, Ohio; the District of 
Columbia; Louisiana; Mississippi; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; 
Tennessee; and, Texas. Approximately 1,800 copies from the second 
printing are available for sale or distribution. 

FUNDING SOURCES 

Fannie Mae Foundation George Gund Foundation 
Southwest Airlines Cleveland Foundation 
Ms. Foundation Cafritz Foundation 
Michigan Federation of Teachers GMAC MortgageEntergy 
Thomas Jefferson University Services, Inc. 
Hospital Long Law Firm, LLP 
Brielle Galleries Acadian Ambulance & Air 
Nestlï¿½ USA, Inc. Med Service 
Oracle Corporation United Parcel Service 
State Street Bank and Trust The ESOP Association 
Company Ms. Jeannette Cantrell Rudy 
Brown Foundation (Individual) 
LBJ Family Foundation Ms. Edna Hibel 
(Individual) 


APPENDIX C 

BIOGRAPHIES OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS 

KAREN HAAS was nominated to be the 33rd Clerk of the House 
of Representatives to replace Jeff Trandahl effective on November 18, 
2005. Prior to this nomination, Haas served as a Floor Assistant to the 
Speaker of the House, J. Dennis Hastert, and has served Speaker 
Hastert in that role since June of 1999. Her career in the House of 
Representatives began in 1984, and she served ten years as the 
Executive-Legislative Assistant to then-Minority Leader Bob Michel 
(R-IL). She became the Director of Government Affairs for ABC/Cap 
Cities in January of 1995 and later became the Senior Policy Analyst 
for Disney in August of 1998. 

JEFF TRANDAHL was appointed Clerk of the House of 
Representatives on January 1, 1999, during the 105th Congress and 
elected Clerk by the House of Representatives for the 106th Congress. 
He resigned as Clerk on November 18, 2005. A native of Spearfish, 
South Dakota, he began his professional career in 1983 as an aide to 

U.S. Senator James Abdnor (R-SD). In 1987 he served Representative 
Virginia Smith (R-NE) and the House Committee on Appropriations. 
He served on the staffs of Representative Pat Roberts (R-KS) and the 
Committee on House Administration from 1990 to 1995, when he was 
appointed Assistant to the Clerk of the House. In 1996 he was 
appointed Acting Chief Administrative Officer of the House until his 
appointment in 1997 as Deputy Clerk of the House. Trandahl is a 
graduate of Spearfish (SD) High School and received a B.A. from the 
University of Maryland. 
EMILY J. REYNOLDS of Nashville, Tennessee, was appointed 
the 31st Secretary of the Senate on January 7, 2003. Prior to her 
appointment as Secretary, Reynolds was the chief of staff for Senator 
Bill Frist. She began her career in politics in 1980 as a special assistant 
to Senator Howard H. Baker, Jr. In 1985 she worked on the successful Senate campaign of then-Governor Kit Bond of Missouri. She 
joined the Bush/Quayle presidential campaign in 1992 as deputy 
director of national coalitions. Ms. Reynolds returned to her home 
state of Tennessee in November 1993 to serve as deputy campaign 
manager and finance director for Dr. Fristï¿½s Senate campaign. During 
Senator Fristï¿½s first term in the Senate, Reynolds became his state 
director. She then managed his successful reelection campaign in 
2000. She became chief of staff for Senator Frist in January 2001 


supervising Senator Fristï¿½s Washington, D.C. and Tennessee offices. 
Reynolds received a B.A. in political science and 
television/radio/film from Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri 
in 1978. 

ALLEN WEINSTEIN was appointed Archivist of the United 
States in February 2005. Weinstein is an accomplished historian, and 
prior to this appointment, he served at the IFES (International 
Foundation for Election Systems). From 1985-2003, he served as 
President of The Center for Democracy, a non-profit foundation that 
he created in 1985 to promote and strengthen the democratic process, 
based in Washington, DC. He was University Professor and 
Professor of History at Boston University from 1985-89, University 
Professor at Georgetown University from 1981-1984 and, from 1981 
to 1983, Executive Editor of The Washington Quarterly at Georgetown's 
Center for Strategic and International Studies. From 1966-81 he was 
Professor of History at Smith College and Chairman of its American 
Studies Program. Weinstein was a founding member of the Board of 
Directors of the United States Institute of Peace and Chairman of its 
Education and Training Committee in 1985, remaining a Director 
until 2001, and now serves on the Chairmanï¿½s Advisory Council. He 
was a founding officer of the International Institute of Democracy in 
Strasbourg from 1989 to 2001. Weinstein has authored numerous 
scholarly books and articles, but is especially known for his ground-
breaking work on Soviet espionage in the U.S. His most applauded 
work to date is titled Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case. 

RICHARD A. BAKER has directed the U.S. Senate Historical 
Office since its creation in 1975. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the 
University of Maryland and mastersï¿½ degrees from Columbia 
University and Michigan State University. Baker has taught courses 
in congressional history for Cornell University and the University of 
Maryland. Before joining the Senate's staff, he served as a specialist 
in American history at the Library of Congress. He is the author of 
many articles related to Senate history and several books, including a 
biography of New Mexico Senator Clinton Anderson and a one-volume history of the Senate. An occasional guest on C-SPAN, Baker 
most recently assisted that network with its 25th anniversary special 
programming on the history of the Capitol. He also served on the 
content development team for the exhibition gallery of the Capitol 
Visitor Center. 

ROBERT REMINI was appointed Historian of the U.S. House of 
Representatives in 2005. He is both a Professor of History Emeritus 
and a Professor of Research Emeritus at the University of Illinois at 
Chicago. He received his doctorate degree from Columbia 


University in 1951 and has taught at Fordham University and 
Columbia University. Since 2002, he has served as the Distinguished 
Visiting Scholar of American History in the John W. Kluge Center at 
the Library of Congress. In addition to his three-volume biography 
of Andrew Jackson, he is the author of biographies of Henry Clay, 
Daniel Webster, John Quincy Adams, and Joseph Smith. A recognized authority on the Jacksonian era, Remini has completed a history of the House of Representatives that was mandated by Congress. 
The book is entitled The House: The History of the U.S. Representatives 
which was published in April 2006. 

JOSEPH COOPER is Professor of Political Science at Johns 
Hopkins University and has served in this position since 1991. He 
has previously served as Autrey Professor of Social Sciences and 
Dean of Social Sciences at Rice University, Staff Director of the U.S. 
House Commission on Administrative Review (Obey Commission), 
and Provost at Johns Hopkins University. His publications include 
several books and numerous articles on the development of congressional structures and processes, congressional elections, party voting 
in Congress, legislative-executive relations, changing patterns of congressional leadership, and the decline of trust in Congress. He also 
has served as an Associate Editor of the Encyclopedia of the American 
Legislative System and an Advisory Editor of The Congress of the United 
States, 1789-1989. 

PAUL GHERMAN is University Librarian and Director of 
Central Library at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He 
has served in this capacity since 1996. Prior to this position he was 
Director of Libraries at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. He has 
written extensively on digital libraries. He holds a bachelorï¿½s degree 
in English and history from Wayne State University and a masterï¿½s 
degree in library science from the University of Michigan. 

TIMOTHY JOHNSON is Associate Librarian and Curator of 
Special Collections and Rare Books at the University of Minnesota. 
Prior to this position he directed archives and college libraries in 
Chicago and Lake Forest, Illinois. He serves on the governing board 
of Metronet, a Minnesota multi-type library system, is a past member 
of the Steering Committee of the Government Records Section of the 
Society of American Archivists (SAA), and former editor of the 
Government Records Section newsletter. In addition to SAA, he is a 
member of the American Library Association (ALA), its Rare Books 
and Manuscripts Section, and the Minnesota Library Association. He 
holds a masters degree in theological studies from North Park 
Theological Seminary (Chicago) and a masterï¿½s degree in library science from the University of Minnesota. His research interests are var


ied and he has published works in library, immigration history, and 
church history fields and produced a number of exhibits in the areas 
of art, literature, religion, and politics. 

ALAN C. LOWE is Executive Director of the Howard H. Baker, Jr., 
Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee. Prior to this 
position, Lowe served in the Office of Presidential Libraries at the 
National Archives and Records Administration where he helped to 
oversee 12 presidential libraries and projects throughout the nation. 
During this time, Lowe also served as interim Director for the 
Franklin Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New York. 
Before joining the Office of Presidential Libraries, Lowe was an 
archivist at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, 
California. 

SUSAN PALMER is Professor of History at Aurora University. 
Recently she was appointed curator of the universityï¿½s Jenks 
Memorial Collection of Adventual Materials. She received her Ph.D. 
in history from Northern Illinois University in 1986. Her teaching 
experience and research interests span the various fields of cultural, 
social, and religious history, and she has published in immigration 
history. She served as a commissioner on the Historic Preservation 
Commission for Aurora, Illinois, 1981-1986, and as president of the 
Aurora Historical Society, 1990-91. She is currently writing a book on 
the early decades of Aurora University and its connections to the 
nineteenth-century Millerite Movement. 

GUY L. ROCHA is the Nevada State Archivist and has served in 
that position since his appointment in 1981. From 1976 to 1981 Rocha 
worked with the Nevada Historical Society in Reno. He received his 
bachelorï¿½s degree from Syracuse University in Social 
Studies/Education in 1973, was awarded his masterï¿½s degree in 
American Studies from San Diego State University in 1975 and pursued post-graduate work in history at the University of Nevada, 
Reno. 


APPENDIX D 

STATUTE ESTABLISHING ADVISORY COMMITTEE 

Public Law 101-509-November 5, 1990 

"CHAPTER 27 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON THE RECORDS 
OF CONGRESS 

"Sec.
"2701. Advisory Committee on the Records of Congress.
"2702. Membership; chairman; meetings.
"2703. Functions of the committee.
"2704. Powers of the Committee.
"2705. Compensation and travel expenses.
"2706. Administrative provisions.


ï¿½" 2701. Advisory Committee on the Records of Congress 

"(a) There is established the Advisory Committee on the Records of 
Congress (hereafter in this chapter referred to as the Committee). 

"(b) The Committee shall be subject to the provisions of the Federal 
Advisory Committee Act (5 U.S.C. App.), except that the Committee 
shall be of permanent duration, notwithstanding any provision of 
section 14 of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. 

ï¿½" 2702. Membership; chairman; meetings 

"(a)(1) The Committee shall consist of the eleven members 
including- 

"(A)(i) the Secretary of the Senate; 

"(ii) the Clerk of the House of Representatives; 

"(iii) the Archivist of the United States; 

"(iv) the Historian of the Senate; and 

"(v) the Historian of the House of Representatives; and 

"(B) six members of whom one shall be appointed by each of 

the following: 

"(i) the Speaker of the House of Representatives; 

"(ii) the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives; 

"(iii) the Majority Leader of the Senate; 

"(iv) the Minority Leader of the Senate; 

"(v) the Secretary of the Senate; and 

"(vi) the Clerk of the House of Representatives. 


"(2) Each member appointed under paragraph (1)(B) shall have 
knowledge or expertise in United States history, archival management, publishing, library science, or use of legislative records. 

"(b) The Secretary of the Senate shall serve as Chairman during the 
two-year period beginning on January 1, 1991, and the Clerk of the 
House of Representatives shall serve as Chairman during the two-
year period beginning January 1, 1993. Thereafter, such members 
shall alternate serving as Chairman for a term of two years. 

"(c)(1) Members of the Committee referred to in subsection 
(a)(1)(A) shall serve only while holding such offices. Members 
appointed to the Committee under subsection (a)(1)(B) shall serve for 
a term of two years, and may be reappointed without limitation. The 
initial appointments for such terms shall begin on January 1, 1991. 

"(2) Any vacancy on the Committee shall not affect the powers of 
the Committee. Any vacancy in an appointed position on the 
Committee shall be filled in the same manner in which the original 
appointment was made. 

"(d)(1) No later than thirty days after the date on which the first 
session of the 102d Congress begins, the Committee shall hold its first 
meeting. Thereafter, the Committee shall meet semiannually or at the 
call of a majority of its members. 

"(2) Seven members of the Committee shall constitute a quorum, 
but a lesser number may hold hearings. 

"ï¿½2703. Functions of the Committee 

The Committee shall 

"(1) review the management and preservation of the records of 
Congress; 

"(2) report to and advise the Congress and the Archivist of the 
United States on such management and preservation; and 

"(3)(A) no later than December 31, 1991, conduct a study and submit a report to the Congress on 

"(i) the effect any transfer of records of the National Archives and 
Records Administration from facilities located in Washington, DC, to 
any location outside of Washington, DC, shall have on the management and preservation of the records of Congress; and 

"(ii) the five year plan for the management and preservation of 
the records of Congress; and 

"(B) no later than December 31, 1995, conduct a study to update the 
report submitted under subparagraph (A)(ii), and submit a report to 
Congress. 


"ï¿½2704. Powers of the Committee 

"(a) For purposes of carrying out the duties referred to under section 2703, the Committee or, on the authorization of the Committee, 
any subcommittee or member thereof, may hold such hearings, sit 
and act at such times and places, take such testimony, and receive 
such evidence as is appropriate. 

"(b) The Committee may secure directly from any department or 
agency of the United States such information as the Committee may 
require to carry out the duties referred to under section 2703. Upon 
request of the Chairman of the Committee, the head of such department or agency shall furnish such information to the Committee. 

"ï¿½2705. Compensation and travel expenses 

"A member of the Committee may not be paid compensation for 
service performed as a member of the Committee. However, members of the Committee shall be allowed travel expenses, including per 
diem in lieu of subsistence, at rates authorized for employees of agencies under subchapter 1 of chapter 57 of title 5, United States Code, 
while away from their homes or regular places of business in the performance of service for the Committee. 

"ï¿½2706. Administrative provisions 

"(a) Upon request of the Committee, the head of any Federal 
agency is authorized to detail to the Committee, on a nonreimbursable basis, any of the personnel of such agency to assist the 
Committee in carrying out the duties referred to under section 2703 
and such detail shall be without interruption or loss of civil service 
status or privilege. 

"(b) For purposes of supporting the Committee, the Archivist may 
obtain the services of experts and consultants in accordance with the 
provisions of section 3109 of title 5, United States Code, but at rates 
for individuals not to exceed the daily equivalent of the minimum 
annual rate of basic pay payable for GS-16 of the General Schedule 
under section 5332 of such title." 


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