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Date: July 11, 2012

To: File 

From: Anna Therese McGowan /RA/ 

Chief, Technical Information Center Section 

OIS/IRSD/ISB 

Subject: Agencywide Documents Access and Management (ADAMS) User Group Meeting 

Minutes, May 2, 2012 

This memo accompanies the summary of the public meeting held on Wednesday, May 2, 2012, 

in the Public Document Room, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This was the 23rd 

meeting of the ADAMS User Group. 

 
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AGENCYWIDE DOCUMENTS ACCESS AND MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 

USER GROUP MEETING

Wednesday, May 2, 2012 

2:00 p.m.–2:45 p.m. 

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Headquarters 

Public Document Room O1 – F21

Agenda for Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) 

User Group Meeting No. 23

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

2. Member Issues and Questions - Anna McGowan (2:05–2:10 p.m.) 

3. System Enhancements - Mark Evans (2:10–2:15 p.m.) 

4. New Business or Questions - Anna McGowan (2:15–2:45 p.m.) 

5. Adjournment (2:45 p.m.) 

 
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MEETING MINUTES 

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

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

Commission (NRC) staff in attendance. Karen Danoff, Mark Evans, Adam Glazer, 

Mary Mendiola, Russell Nichols, Mohan Reddy, Bebbie Rhodes, and Sardar Zuberi attended in 

person on behalf of the Information and Records Services Division and the Office of Information 

Services (OIS). 

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

meeting: Bechtel, the New York State Attorney General’s office, Nuclear Energy Institute, 

Progress Energy, STARS Regulatory Affairs, and Westinghouse. Jana Kruger of NRC/OIS also 

participated by phone. 

Minutes for the Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) User 

Group (AUG) meetings are available for review on the NRC AUG Web page, which is linked 

from the ADAMS Web page. 

2. Member Issues and Questions (2:05–2:10 p.m.) 

Two updates have been made to the new version of Web-based ADAMS (WBA) in response to 

change requests from ADAMS users. One provides a link to the “parent” document in a 

package from the “child” documents’ Document Properties Parent Document tab. 

The other change now offers the option to display the Microform Addresses column in the 

results in the Public Legacy Library. 

There has also been a display issue in the Web version of ADAMS in which the documents in a 

package have not been displayed in the appropriate order in which they were published. The 

NRC is working to correct this.

At the meeting, it was announced that on Friday night, May 11, 2012, the WBA system would be 

temporarily taken down and the changes would be available by Saturday morning. 

3. System Enhancements (2:10–2:15 p.m.) 

Any suggestions sent to the Public Documents Room (PDR) staff for changes in WBA are 

passed along to the developers. They determine the cost and time needed to implement the 

changes. The NRC relies on an iterative process to make WBA user-friendly and transparent. 

4. New Business or Questions (2:15–2:45 p.m.) 

Q1: In a proceeding we are involved in, there is a reference to a 2001 document with an 

ML Accession No. that is no longer publicly available. Can you check on this document? 

A1: Yes, please send the Accession No. to PDR staff members and they will check with 

program staff to track it down. We can find out the history of the document. 
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Q2: I am so much happier with ADAMS than I was in the past. Is there a way to 

customize our display options? I always choose 500 for displaying the search results. 

I mostly use the daily folders. 

A2: The default setting is 20 documents, but no, we don’t have the option to customize the 

settings. We’ll have to do some analysis on this, but we may be able to reset the default for just 

the daily folders. 

Q3: In the old Bibliographic Retrieval System, I did docket searches. Is there a way of 

sorting by docket in the daily folders? I am searching for responses to Fukushima 

orders from different plants. 

A3: We can’t technically sort multivalue fields, only single-value fields. The docket field is a 

multivalue field because a document can have more than one docket number. This is common 

among many databases. You can export the search results into an Excel spreadsheet, and 

then you can sort them however you wish. 

Another option is to use the Advanced Search feature and limit your searches by docket 

number. However, exporting the search results to an Excel spreadsheet might be the best 

option. 

Q4: Was there a short hiatus in being able to search WBA content? 

A4: The search feature was never actually taken away. When we combined the metadata 

search with a content search, there were more problems. We heard from users about this, and 

so we put this feature back. We are trying to make sure the crawler works correctly in 

searching. 

Q5: When you roll out the new version, can you put out an ADAMS User Group notice on 

the significant changes? 

A5: The main changes are the link to a parent document in a package, the re-order of the 

display of package documents, and the ability to display the microform address in the results 

columns. The ADAMS system notice will describe the changes in the new release. 

Q6: The NRC has a lot of nonpublic documents. Could they be made public after a few 

years? How many staff members are available to review documents? 

A6: There is a requirement to review documents every 7 years for SUNSI (sensitive 

unclassified nonsafeguards information). ADAMS does have the capability now to identify 

documents for review and notify the program offices about their documents. However, not 

every SUNSI category will be reviewed. To comply with an executive order, the Federal 

Government now is studying ways to decontrol sensitive documents after a time; however, there 

has been no ruling on this yet. There is a controlled unclassified information program within the 

government to discuss procedures for reviewing and releasing documents. 

Q7: How many NRC documents are available for review? 

A7: The ADAMS Support Center can run a log of the documents available for review. Many 

documents will be reviewed in 2014 or 2015. It is a large undertaking. The staff of the program 

offices will review them. 
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Anna McGowan thanked everyone for their participation in the meeting. The next ADAMS User 

Group meeting will be held in late October or early November 2012. 

The meeting minutes for today’s meeting will be posted in ADAMS and on the ADAMS User 

Group page. 

5. Adjournment (2:45 p.m.)