Date: December 6, 2010 

To: File 

From: Anna Therese McGowan /RA/

 Chief, Technical Information Center Section 

 OIS/IRSD/ISB 

Subject: Meeting Minutes for ADAMS Public User Group Meeting, November 3, 2010 

 

 The memo accompanies the summary of the public meeting held on Wednesday, 

November 3, 2010 in the Public Document Room, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This 

was the 20th meeting of the ADAMS User Group. 
AGENCYWIDE DOCUMENTS ACCESS AND MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (ADAMS) USER 

GROUP MEETING 

Wednesday, November 3, 2010 

2:00–3:00 p.m. 

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Headquarters 

Public Document Room O1-F21 

Agenda for ADAMS User Group Meeting #20 

1. General Announcements—Anna McGowan (2:00–2:05 p.m.) 

2. Member Issues and Questions—Anna McGowan (2:05–2:55 p.m.) 

3. Adjournment (3:00 p.m.) 
MEETING MINUTES 

1. General Announcements—Anna McGowan (2:00–2:05 p.m.)

Anna McGowan opened the meeting at 2 p.m. She introduced the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission (NRC) staff in attendance. Staff members from the Information and Records 

Services Division and the Office of Information Services (OIS) were Karen Danoff, Elizabeth 

Deahl, Mark Evans, Adam Glazer, K.G. Golshan, Patricia Hall, Mary Mendiola, Thomas Smith, 

and Sardar Zuberi. Three public visitors were present, from Energis Company (Japan), Japan 

Electric Power Information Center, and Scientech. 

Representatives from the following organizations used the telephone bridge to participate in the 

meeting: AREVA, Bechtel, States of Florida and New York, Nuclear Energy Institute, 

Nucleonics Week, Progress Energy, SCANA, Scientech, Union of Concerned Scientists, 

Westinghouse, Westinghouse Hematite, and Winston and Strawn. 

Minutes for ADAMS User Group (AUG) meetings are available for review on the AUG Web 

page at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams/users-group.html, which is linked from the 

ADAMS main Web page at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. 

2. Member Issues and Questions—Anna McGowan (2:05–2:55 p.m.)

Ms. McGowan stated that the new Web-based ADAMS (WBA) was introduced on 

October 20, 2010, part of the “year of change” for ADAMS during 2010. In February 2010, 

ADAMS PUBLIC was introduced, replacing Citrix-based ADAMS. WBA is the new public 

interface for ADAMS, and it will become the single interface in 2011. 

Since WBA was introduced 2 weeks ago, the Public Document Room (PDR) staff has received 

many positive comments on this new interface as well as excellent support from the developers 

in OIS. Ms. McGowan mentioned the WBA User Guide and “Frequently Asked Questions” 

(FAQs) (http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams/web-based.html) and invited the attendees to 

suggest additions or changes to these documents. She then asked participants to share any 

questions or comments on WBA. 

Q1: I would like to say how pleased I am with the look of the new ADAMS. It is very userfriendly. I appreciate what I’m seeing, so thank you. 

A: Are you able to find documents? 

Q1: Yes, and I like the way it looks. It is pleasing to the eye. As someone who is 

impaired visually, it’s helpful. 

Q2: I would like to ask how to access the public Legacy Library through WBA.

A: In Advanced Search, there are two check boxes at the bottom of the page for the Public 

Library and Public Legacy. You can check one or the other, or check both to search them at the 

same time. 

Patricia Hall thanked the PDR staff members for their help during WBA testing and 

development. Ms. McGowan stated that the PDR staff members incorporated the experience 
they had gained through the introduction of ADAMS PUBLIC into the development of WBA. 

During WBA development, the PDR staff members contributed their ADAMS searching 

experience to assist the developers in designing a user-friendly interface as well as in keeping 

the users’ concerns at the forefront of the design. 

Q3: I think WBA is an excellent product. I was getting frustrated with ADAMS PUBLIC, since it 

was frequently down. When my frustration got to its height, the new system came out. I’ve 

been an ADAMS user for 10 to 12 years, and compared to the old system, it’s a good product. 

I’m using it exclusively now. I haven’t used the manual, because it’s intuitive. 

A: Thank you. Does anyone else use only WBA, or both WBA and ADAMS PUBLIC? 

Another user stated that she only uses the new product. 

 “I have found some things in WBA that I didn’t find in ADAMS PUBLIC. The 

 response time is quicker in WBA.” 

Q4: Has anyone else noticed in WBA, when sorting the columns in the results list, that it takes 

some time to sort? The old system was quicker. 

A: This is directly related to the size of your results list. The longer the list, the longer it will take 

to sort it. We can look into this. How long is it taking? 

About 5 to 6 seconds. Also, you can’t change the order of the columns.

 A: Yes, you can do this by dragging a column over to where you want it. 

Q5: I was used to the old system, and I am trying to adjust to the new system.

A: We can demonstrate the new system and answer any questions you may have after the 

meeting. The current user interface will be the permanent user interface. 

WBA and ADAMS PUBLIC are two completely different technologies. Technology evolves, and 

we are adapting to it. The new technology no longer allows searchers to do certain practices, 

so the two systems will have differences. The old Citrix-based system was a “thick” client which 

means that processes functioned on the users’ computer, but Federal Government regulations 

now require us to have a Web-based system where processes run on a remote server or “thin” 

client. 

The NRC is working on an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system so that documents 

and other NRC information will be available through one portal. WBA is one part of ECM. As 

an analogy, with WBA, we now have a new “front door”—behind the door, things are changing, 

but the “front door” will remain the same. In 2011, ADAMS PUBLIC will go away, and only WBA 

will remain. With its new software, WBA has better response times and greater searching 

flexibility and transparency. Our goal is to provide improved information access through the 

Web, a familiar resource to everyone. 

Ms. McGowan mentioned an item of interest to the AUG distribution list members. As part of 

the Open Government initiative, the NRC now uses GovDelivery, which allows anyone to 

receive alerts when NRC Web pages are updated or modified. To receive alerts, choose the 
“Subscribe to Updates” link on the upper right-hand side of the NRC Open Government Web 

page (http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/open.html). 

Ms. McGowan shared this service with AUG members since it is a new option to receive 

information about ADAMS. However, the NRC will also continue to use the AUG distribution 

list. 

Q6: I have a question about the adjudicatory page. Its current interface looks like ADAMS 

PUBLIC. Will it be changing to a Web design?

A: Yes, we are currently doing user acceptance testing on the Electronic Hearing Docket 

(http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/regulatory/adjudicatory.html). Its new interface will launch by the 

end of December 2010. We are upgrading our other interfaces as part of our plans for ECM, as 

we did with WBA. 

Thomas Smith mentioned that on November 1, 2010, ADAMS celebrated its 11th anniversary. 

ADAMS has progressed from the old Bibliographic Retrieval System, through Citrix-based 

access, the old Web-based access, ADAMS PUBLIC, and now to the new WBA. Mr. Smith 

recalled the discussion at the AUG meeting a year ago about ECM, and he is glad to see the 

outcome of all of the planning with the launch of WBA. 

Ms. McGowan mentioned that, thanks to the strong response from AUG members and other 

ADAMS users last year about changes needed in ADAMS, developers have incorporated these 

changes and improvements into WBA. 

Q7: I think it is a good system. I can save searches and reuse them. Is there a way to obtain a 

link to a document, so I can e-mail it to someone?

A: We have put in a change request for this. 

Q8: I would like to request a time stamp for the Date Added search in Advanced Search. It is 

useful for journalists and others who check for new documents several times a day. 

A: We have also put in a change request for this feature and are analyzing it. 

Q9: My colleague does these kinds of searches. She’s noticed that all documents are in the 

order in which they were entered into ADAMS. You can keep track of the last document that 

you saw, for when you resume searching. Maybe this will help the journalists and other users, 

until the time stamp is added.

A: Thank you. We can also add this to the FAQs. 

Q10: I love the new system. I have two observations. First, I have a question about the reports 

feature. When you create reports for a group of documents, it only shows you the documents 

on the page that you are on. You can’t do reports on the whole list of results, but only 

100 documents at a time. Can you address this, if possible? 

Second, can you explain the difference in the folder contents between ADAMS PUBLIC and 

WBA, regarding the number of documents? 
A: In the folders, ADAMS PUBLIC counts the packages plus the documents inside the 

packages, while WBA only counts the packages. If you do a search on Date Added, you can 

see all of the documents (that are in packages) separately. WBA does this the correct way. 

Although ADAMS PUBLIC will no longer be available next year, we can include an explanation 

of this in the User Guide for now. 

For the reports in WBA, we agreed on a limit of 100 documents per page. We could change it, 

but some limit is needed since performance decreases when creating reports on large sets. 

Q11: When I search on proposed rules for 10 CFR Part 37, I see that they are also in 

http://www.regulations.gov. Are the ones on the NRC Web site separate copies, or are they 

linked to Regulations.gov?

A: They are separate copies. 

So Regulations.gov may have some documents that you don’t have?

 

A: Yes, Regulations.gov has a compilation of documents from different agencies. 

Q12: Regarding the packages in WBA, having a bland package title is not helpful. I have to 

open each package.

A: You can do a search on Date Added to see the titles of all the individual documents added 

that day. You can save this search and reuse it. We can also put this into the FAQs. 

Q13: How do I search for a word in the title? Does WBA just search the title, or the content? 

A: In Advanced Search, in the Query builder, you can search by Document Title (under 

Document Properties) and also by Document Content. In Simple Search, WBA searches the 

content of the document and not just the title. 

Q14: Is there a user group for the Electronic Information Exchange (EIE)? 

I am not aware of an EIE user group, but we could put one together. We could ask through the 

AUG distribution list whether there is any interest in an EIE user group. We will suggest this to 

the NRC office that handles the EIE, and we will post the resulting information in the minutes. 

Note: The PDR staff sent a request for interest in developing an EIE User Group to members of 

the AUG distribution list and the support for forming such a group was minimal. We will accept 

EIE questions at future User Group meetings.

Q15: What platforms are successful for WBA? 

A: WBA works on Internet Explorer (IE) 7, IE8, Firefox, and Google Chrome. It also seems to 

work well on Safari for MAC users, but MAC users can also download Firefox. It does not work 

on IE6. We will put this information in the User Guide, and we will do full testing with these 

other browsers in later versions of WBA. 

The PDR staff provided a tip for searching WBA. In the Public Library, the Keyword search 

(under Document Properties in the Advanced Search Query builder) is not effective because the 

Public Library Keyword field does not contain actual keywords from the documents. The 

Keyword search will work in Public Legacy, which contains actual keywords from the documents 
in that field. The two libraries are indexed differently, so if you are searching the Public Library 

or both libraries at the same time, you should not use the Keyword field. 

Ms. McGowan thanked all of the attendees for their active participation in this meeting, as well 

as her colleagues who participated and answered questions. She stated that everyone’s input 

is welcome as we work on updates to WBA and requested that comments be sent to the PDR 

staff (http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/contact-pdr.html). The next AUG meeting will take place in 

May 2011 and will be announced through the AUG listserv and on the NRC Web site. 

3. Adjournment (3:00 p.m.)