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Date: June 15, 2011 

 

To: File 

From: Anna Therese McGowan /RA/ 

Chief, Technical Information Center Section 

OIS/IRSD/ISB 

Subject: Minutes of ADAMS User Group Public Meeting, May 18, 2011 

This memorandum accompanies the summary of the public meeting held on 

Wednesday, May 18, 2011, in the Public Document Room, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission. This was the 21st meeting of the ADAMS User Group. 

 
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AGENCYWIDE DOCUMENT ACCESS AND MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (ADAMS) USER

GROUP MEETING 

Wednesday, May 18, 2011 

2:00–3:00 p.m. 

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Headquarters 

Public Document Room O1-F21 

Agenda for ADAMS User Group Meeting #21 

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

2. Member Issues and Questions—Bebbie Rhodes (2:05–2:55 p.m.) 

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

 
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MEETING MINUTES 

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

Bebbie Rhodes opened the meeting at 2:00 p.m. She introduced the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 

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

Services Division (IRSD) and the Office of Information Services (OIS) were Grace Canty, 

Karen Danoff, Elizabeth Deahl, Mark Evans, K.G. Golshan, Joseph Holonich, Jana Kruger, 

Mary Mendiola, Kenny Nguyen, Russell Nichols, Thomas Smith, John Stark, and Sardar Zuberi. 

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

meeting: Bechtel, GE Hitachi, Platts Newsletters, Progress Energy, STARS Regulatory Affairs, 

Westinghouse, 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 (2:05–2:55 p.m.) 

Bebbie Rhodes explained the two new features of Web-based ADAMS (WBA)—the time stamp 

feature and the “Get URL” feature—that were introduced in WBA Release 1.2. The time stamp 

enables users to search by the time of day that a document was entered into ADAMS. The “Get 

URL” feature allows users to copy and paste the direct link to a document to send to other 

users. 

The NRC will issue a new release of WBA in autumn 2011, and many new features requested 

by public users will be available with that release. 

Some users have asked questions recently about content searching. John Stark explained that 

not all Portable Document Format (PDF) documents are in the same format, which affects 

search results retrieval. All PDF documents can be retrieved by using the metadata as search 

terms. Currently, content searching works best when the PDF is a simple document, rather 

than a document with other documents embedded within it. The next release of WBA will 

address this issue, but in the meantime, users can get the best results by searching the 

metadata, such as the document type, document date, and docket number fields. 

Q1: Are there different types of PDFs? I thought all PDFs had to be in a certain format for 

ADAMS. I have found this problem recently with a lot of documents. 

A: Documents are sent to ADAMS in many ways, such as hard copies, DVDs, and PDF files. 

We are working to fix this content searching problem in the next release. If you are having 

trouble finding certain documents, we can meet with you after the meeting to resolve this issue. 

The OIS staff provided additional information on PDF formats after the meeting. WBA uses two 

methods to provide access to public document content—metadata searching and content 

searching. Metadata are human-supplied data that uniquely identify a document, such as 

author name or accession number. Content searching allows a user to search on the text of 

electronic documents for topics, phrases, or word combinations. WBA also supports the 
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browsing of documents using a folder structure, based on the date on which the document was 

made public.

All content provided through WBA is provided as PDF files. Although PDF is a standard, it is 

also a format with many variations. WBA does not support the indexing (also known as 

crawling) of all variants of the PDF format. For example, compound PDF documents containing 

other embedded document types cannot be accurately indexed for content searching. In this 

event, WBA still stores the metadata of the document, allowing users to access the documents 

through this method, as well as folder browsing. This behavior is by design and intended to 

accommodate the reality of a production public document system handling imperfect 

documents. This exception affects a fraction of one percent of all WBA documents. As stated, 

these documents are still fully accessible using the folder structure or metadata searches. 

Q2: Is there a process where you check ADAMS packages to see if there are other documents 

that should be in a package? 

A: There are a few reasons why documents would not appear with the rest of the package. 

Some documents are not public, so they would not be visible in WBA. Some technical issues 

are also involved. We have focused more on the user interface for this release of WBA rather 

than the publishing function, but we will look at the publishing process as we continue to 

enhance WBA. 

Q3: Is there a human quality assurance/quality control function that determines that certain 

documents belong together? 

A: When documents are grouped into a package, all of the publicly available documents will be 

published. Any documents not publicly available must have a sensitive unclassified 

nonsafeguards information (SUNSI) review completed, after which they are added to the 

package. 

Q4: I will give examples of problem packages to the PDR staff. I am on ADAMS every day, and 

I encounter this problem every day. 

A: Thank you. Can you give some examples that you have found to the PDR staff? Then we 

will have a better chance to address this package issue. Are you seeing documents released 

individually that should be in a package? 

Q5: Yes, every day. Is this also a problem for other users? 

A: Some other users have seen this problem, and they have also seen some empty packages. 

Sometimes items in a package have different release dates, so the PDR staff must contact the 

document owner to resolve the issue. 

Putting documents in packages is a human function rather than a software function, so 

releasing new software will not resolve the package problems. A process is in place for 

reviewing and publishing documents that will need to be revised. 

When checking the properties of a document, use the “Parent Documents” tab to see the 

package title and accession number. 
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Q6: Thank you for the new release. One issue I’ve found is that some document titles are just 

numbers instead of the title. I will e-mail you some examples. 

A: Thank you. We will forward those to our information technology (IT) staff so they can be 

fixed. 

Q7: Sometimes it takes two tries to open a file. Also, in the middle of a session, sometimes the 

Internet just kicks you out of ADAMS. I get the “Internet Explorer has experienced a problem” 

error message and it shuts down. 

A: Please send us a screen shot of that. Are documents not opening? What browser are you 

using? 

Q8: It happens intermittently, usually when I open larger documents. I try hitting F5 to refresh 

the page. 

A: Problems with larger documents may involve many factors, such as computer memory or 

bandwidth. It is hard to pinpoint the reason why this is happening. If you wait a few seconds, 

the document will usually display. 

Q9: I have waited up to a minute and nothing happened. Then I just tried again. 

A: We are glad to hear of these problems so we can fix them. 

Q10: I have a question about queries. I get a query timeout even on moderately short queries. 

A: Can you provide us with examples of the queries that you are submitting? Please send 

them to the PDR e-mail address, PDR.Resource@nrc.gov. Sending us screen shots of your 

queries would be helpful, too. 

We are formulating the release notes for the next version of WBA. We will provide the notes 

when they are ready. One of the changes in the new release is that the user will have the 

option to display up to 500 items at a time. Also, we will clean up the search interface so that it 

is more user friendly. 

Q11: Will the new version still support Internet Explorer 7? 

A: The IT staff will make sure that we include Internet Explorer 7. The new version will support 

Mozilla Firefox and several versions of Internet Explorer. 

Q12: When I am on the Simple Search screen and I open a document, how do I get back to the 

Simple Search screen? 

A: If you hit the Escape key, it will close the screen you are viewing. If you have any other 

questions, please contact the PDR staff. 

Bebbie Rhodes thanked everyone for attending the meeting. She recommended that users 

consult the WBA Users Guide (http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams/web-based.html), which is 

linked from the WBA Web page, and asked the meeting participants to contact the PDR staff 

with any questions or problems with WBA. 
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The next AUG meeting will be in autumn 2011. The date will be posted on the AUG Web page, 

and an announcement will also be distributed to those on the AUG distribution list. 

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