January 11, 2013 

MEMORANDUM TO: File 

FROM: Anna Therese McGowan /RA/ 

Chief, Technical Information Center Section 

OIS/IRSD/ISB 

Subject: ADAMS PUBLIC USER GROUP MEETING MINUTES, 

NOVEMBER 7, 2012 

This memo accompanies the summary of the public meeting held on 

Wednesday, November 7, 2012 in the Public Document Room of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission. This was the 24th meeting of the ADAMS User Group. 

CONTACT: Anna McGowan, OIS/IRSD 

 (301) 415-7204 
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AGENCYWIDE DOCUMENTS ACCESS AND MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (ADAMS) USER 

GROUP MEETING

Wednesday, November 7, 2012 

2:00–2:30 p.m. 

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Headquarters 

Public Document Room O1 - F21

Agenda for ADAMS User Group Meeting Number 24

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

2. Member Issues and Questions—Anna McGowan (2:05–2:30 p.m.) 

3. Adjournment (2:30 p.m.) 
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MEETING MINUTES 

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

Anna McGowan, Chief, Technical Information Center Section, Office of Information Services, 

opened the meeting at 2 p.m. She introduced the other U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 

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

(IRSD), the Office of Information Services (OIS) were Karen Danoff, Adam Glazer, Mary 

Mendiola, Laura Pearson, Bebbie Rhodes, and Sardar Zuberi. Mark Evans and Jana Kruger 

from the Business Process Improvement and Applications Division, OIS also participated. 

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

meeting: Bechtel, Certrec, Enercon, Fluor, Westinghouse, and Winston and Strawn. 

Minutes for ADAMS User Group (AUG) meetings are available for review on the NRC’s 

AUG Web page, which is linked from the Web-based ADAMS (WBA) page. 

2. Member Issues and Questions (2:05–2:30 p.m.) 

Anna McGowan presented a question that an ADAMS user submitted to the AUG listserv. The 

question was, “Is it possible to be able to run the same search in ADAMS Public Library and 

ADAMS Public Legacy without having to re-enter the same information each time?” 

The answer is that this is not possible since these two databases contain different fields. The 

information within them is organized differently. The fields in ADAMS Public Legacy are more 

structured, while the ADAMS Public Library enables content searching. Cross-file searching 

would have to be limited to the fields that the two databases have in common. 

Anna McGowan asked the participants if they had any questions about ADAMS. 

Q1: It should not be too hard to search both the ADAMS Public Library and ADAMS Public 

Legacy for fields such as “author name” at the same time. 

A1: Since the two databases have some different fields, there is no way to allow someone to 

search both the ADAMS Public Library and the ADAMS Public Legacy for the shared fields and 

restrict the fields that are not shared. This would require a full architecture redesign of 

Web-based ADAMS and would be very costly. It would not provide the return on investment and 

would not be an appropriate use of taxpayer money. 

Q2: I’ve noticed that many meeting summaries are not in packages. Are you trying to get away 

from the concept of packages? 

A2: This has nothing to do with the technical side of ADAMS. In other words, it is not a system 

issue. Many different NRC employees place documents in ADAMS. It is the individual author’s 

responsibility to put documents into packages. 
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Q3: I think that the ADAMS User Group (AUG) should be more vocal and have another means 

to communicate, such as by raising issues with Darren Ash. 

A3: Darren Ash is the agency’s chief information officer. If the PDR staff member learns of an 

issue, he or she addresses the issue or refers it to the person or office who can address it. 

Another means of communication with the NRC is to post comments on the NRC blog. This is a 

part of the NRC’s participation in the Open Government initiative. 

Q4: I am looking for some very old documents from the 1960s and 1970s. Should I contact the 

PDR for help in finding these documents? 

A4: Yes. If the PDR cannot help you find these documents, we can contact our Records and 

Archives Section staff. Have you tried searching the National Technical Reports Library 

(NTRL)? The National Technical Information Service (NTIS) is digitizing older Government 

documents and making them available through NTRL. Access to the NTRL is available only by 

subscription; however, the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) database can be 

searched by anyone. 

Q5: Web-based ADAMS has been working well. Sometimes when I do an ADAMS advanced 

search, such as “Document Title includes” significance determination, I don’t get a hit, but when 

I try it in the content search, it pulls up the title that I want. Should I use quotes in my search? 

A5: If you want the words to appear anywhere in the title, then do not use quotation marks. If 

you want the exact phrase, then you can use quotation marks. 

Q6: Who creates the daily folders and decides when they appear? Sometimes they do not 

appear until 10:00 a.m. 

A6: The daily folders are automatically created by the system as part of the regular document 

processing. The Processing Center staff reviews the documents and then publishes them. The 

system then automatically creates the daily folder the first time each day that staff publishes a 

document. The documents are published every half hour or so throughout the day and added to 

the appropriate folder. 

Q7: Sometimes I open a package and it is empty. 

A7: Yes, sometimes the package is released by staff of the respective program office before the 

documents are in it. This is done by the program office staff that creates the documents; it is not 

a function of the ADAMS system. 
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Q8: The search section takes up too much room when I move over to the right side of the 

screen to generate reports. 

A8: Clicking the double arrow on the right side of the search section, at the top, minimizes the 

search section. Then clicking the double arrow again restores it. 

Anna McGowan mentioned that the PDR staff is always available to help ADAMS users. They 

are advocates for the public and can answer questions or pass along suggestions to the 

ADAMS developers. 

Ms. McGowan concluded by thanking the participants for joining the meeting and reminded 

them that the next AUG meeting will be in spring 2013.