Archivists sent out a call to the entire agency, which is scattered in branch offices throughout the United States. Then we had a selection committee with 15 staff members who are considered subject area experts. Wall was a member of the committee, and she laughed when she admitted there was a lot of argument about some of the decisions. It was such fun. Now that the first 50,000 documents are in the works, the committee will meet again and look into gaps in its coverage.
More records are in the Washington, DC, headquarters, regional offices and presidential libraries.
Every month there will be thousands more put in there. The effort will continue at least until February 1999. New material will find its way onto the Internet on the first Monday of every month. Electronic preservationists scan directly from the original document whenever possible, and the master files are extremely high-quality. However, in the interest of rapid loading for Internet users, they are not tremendously detailed in the versions available on-line.