Interviewer(s): William Carpenter
Interviewee(s): Richard Wood

William Carpenter: OK. I guess we can start? This is an interview for the National Archives Assembly Legacy Project. The subject is Richard E. Wood. The interviewer is William C. Carpenter. Today's date is August 24, 2005. The time is about thirteen minutes past noon. I've drawn up a bunch of questions that can serve as a rough outline for the conversation today. We'll go through those in order, and in between, ifyou have any other concerns, Dick, you can just go ahead and tell me, and there will be time at the back to cover anything that we didn't cover within the ...

Richard Wood: OK. Ifyou have any questions for me, just interrupt, and I'll answer them as best I can.

William Carpenter: OK. Try to forget that you're being taped, but it's difficult to do. The first question is, how did your graduate study lead to your work at the National Archives?

Richard Wood: Actually, it was probably more of a personal connection than academic. I went to graduate school with a friend and colleague at Florida State University who subsequently began to work at the National Archives before I did, in the Agricultural Branch. And I was staying with him as I was doing dissertation research. And I would do my research in the research room, and ofcourse he would be at his job. One afternoon we were together, obviously, as I was staying at his place, and he said that there was a fellowship opening at the National Historic Publications Commission, which is now the National Historic Publications and Records Commission, and that maybe I'd better consider applying for it, but I'd better apply for it quick, because there was only about a week before it closed. So I did, and actually I was selected to work as an NHPC Fellow with the papers of Jefferson Davis at Rice University in Houston. And so that's how I really got connected with the National Archives; although I had done research there, I had not initially considered working here, because in those days the academic emphasis was on teaching, to get your doctoral degree, and then to go into teaching at the college or university level.

William Carpenter: Was this fellowship a limited-term fellowship?

Richard Wood: It was a one-year fellowship. I worked at Rice University on the Jeff Davis papers for a year.

William Carpenter: Alright. What brought you up here?

Richard Wood: I'm from this area. I was born and raised here. When the Davis project ended-­ it was not renewable--! just came back to visit friends and visit family and see what I could find in terms of employment. As it turned out, the Davis project needed a researcher here, so I had a joint appointment between the Jefferson Davis papers here as their researcher in Washington and also with the Ulysses S. Grant papers, which was based in Carbondale, Illinois, at Southern Illinois University. So I in fact worked for the two opposing sides in the Civil War at the same time that I was looking for a job. And subsequent to that I worked with the Woodrow Wilson papers, so I consider myself to be like the man on the flying trapeze, where you get to the extension and then you grab on to the next ring. Then when I applied at the Archives, and at that particular point it wasn't in terms ofa particular job, then in 1977 I got an interview with the General Archives Division, with Dan Goggin [?], who was the director at that time, and he hired me. And so I began working in August of 1977 at Suitland in the General Archives Division.

William Carpenter: Had you been looking for an academic job?

Richard Wood: Not actively at the time, because I had not finished my dissertation.

William Carpenter: So that took precedence over anything else ...

Richard Wood: Right. I was trying to finish that up. I got my degree, actually, in 1976; I had worked on it while I was at Rice. But the Ph.D. was then assumed to be, at least where I was working, to be a precursor to going out and looking for a job.

William Carpenter: The second part ofthese background and early career questions have to do with your Army experience. I know you were in the Army for a while, and a lot ofthe records that we deal with here at the National Archives.are military records; did any of your Army experience contribute to your later career at the National Archives?

Richard Wood: Um, I think again that the Army experience is more personal. I came from a strict academic background, so I think for the first time in the military I learned that the world did not consist ofcollege students and bachelor's, master's, and doctoral students. So I got a very, very broad experience by being in the Army. So in that particular respect, and I think, a lot oftimes, it enables you ifyou wish to understand the value of focusing on a particular thing. Because I have to say that I was not the world's most athletic person at the time, nor am I now, and a lot ofpeople in the military had done a lot more difficult physical labor than I did, but they had done it without any kind offocusing. So if they didn't want to do it, they didn't do it--and that's not the way things worked in the Army. But I could get through that, because I knew that it was eight weeks ofBasic, then whatever else comes f9rward, arid that's the end of it. So it was kind oflike an interesting thing in terms of learning to focus; you have to learn to get some perspective and get through what you've got to do.

William Carpenter: OK. Good. Most of this interview has to do with specific processes and changes in processes throughout your career at the National Archives. The first area we are going to talk about is accessioning. I know that for the last many years you have been the head ofthe accessioning group or function within NWMD. The next question has to do with how has records accessioning changed since you started working at the National Archives, and what has driven those changes?

Richard Wood: I think the biggest change that has happened is that, at least in terms of the local area here--first ofall, what is now Archives I (but was then just the main archives building), and then Suitland, and now Archives II--is that the accessioning process has been more regularized. The schedules do say that the records would be transferred, if they are permanent, to the National Archives in five year blocks when they are thirty years old--there is generally some time at which they are going to be transferred to the National Archives--but I think that was not really systematically followed for a long period oftime, due to a number ofreasons. I would imagine staffing, and the fact that many ofthe records that people used at that time were already in the archives. I think that with the implementation ofyearly accession transfer, that has regularized the system a lot more than it had been initially. Also, with the higher profiles that we've had with agencies, we've been more apt to get more direct offers coming from the agencies than previously. I don't want to say that that is absolutely the fact, because I did not work a lot with direct offers in my earlier career, but it seems that with the higher profile and in particular with the annual transfers we have gotten more regular in the process.

William Carpenter: OK. And the annual transfers only started four or five years ago?

Richard Wood: Right. They did, but we still got transfers; I don't want to say that we got nothing, but it has raised the agencies', and in particular the agency records officers' sensitivity to the fact that these things happen every year now.

William Carpenter: What was the driving force behind implementing that yearly transfer/

Richard Wood: The driving force behind it was basically the fact that the records center was going to a reimbursable basis.

William Carpenter: Ah, right.

Richard Wood: That agencies were going to be charged for storing their records in a records center. For a long time the emphasis in the records center program as I remember it was the fact that they could get records out oftheir own agency space into low-cost space. The cost was not on their part, basically, it was on the Archives' part that ran the system. But with the reimbursable system implementation earlier in the century, at the tum of the century, they began to charge agencies for that service. And so, many agencies felt that they needed to transfer their records in order tci avoid charges.

William Carpenter: So if they are permanent records, get them out ofthe records center, and don't pay for them.

Richard Wood: Right.

William Carpenter: What was your role in establishing, or developing, or formalizing, these accessioning procedures?

Richard Wood: I was involved with the Business Process Reengineering that set this up; I was also involved with what was called the WNRC End ofthe Century Project, which was to go through the material that was scheduled as permanent and to look at the records to see if they really were permanent. We found a large number of records that were mis­- scheduled, that were simply not described properly, that when you took a look at them in the center itself you found they really were not what they said they were and that they should be rescheduled under something else. It goes, I think, in part in the sense that people would send records to the record center, and although they would remain under their legal control, it was kind oflike an out-of-sight, out-of-mind kind ofthing. Agencies were not interested in retiring, or accessioning, records, because they had no real incentive to. As long as they remained under their legal control, then were basically paying for the space out ofour own budget, de facto, then they had no incentive to transfer.

William Carpenter: Has that kind of attitude gone away over the last several years?

Richard Wood: I think it has moderated considerably. It is really up to the agency now as to whether they want to pay the money to store their records. If they want to pay the money to store the records, then that's what they'll do. But budgets run so many things these days, that it takes a real incentive for them to keep the records there.

William Carpenter: What kind of relationships have you developed with agency records officers, and how valuable are those relationships?

Richard Wood: In my career I have had a number of agencies that I have worked with; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the most outstanding one I can remember and is the longest ofthe ones that I have had. But I have also developed some relationships based on teaching records disposition schedules when I was in the records appraisal branch. It is valuable to a certain point. You get to know your records officer, and in that case the personal aspect really does smooth the way. You can call on them to ask them questions; in some areas you can call on them ifyou need something, and the personal aspect makes it a little bit better in.terms of getting what it is you need at the moment. And on the other hand, they do the same thing. There have been many cases in which I develop a [Standard Form] 258 for agency records officers, because I've done it, it's more convenient, I can do it and get it to them. That helps them; at least that's one example. In the end, though, I think you have to remember that when you are dealing with agency records officers, that, they do not work for NARA, they work for the agency that pays them. So, you have to be careful, because they will not do anything that they consider to be a detriment, or that their agency doesn't want to do. So you can be very cooperative among small things, but ifyou want a major records collection transferred that they don't want to transfer, they won't do it.

William Carpenter: So there are limits to that relationship ...

Richard Wood: There are limits to that relationship. But in general, I would say that 70 to 80 percent ofthe time it works pretty well.

William Carpenter: Can you give examples ofrelationships that are negative; where you have a bad working relationship with an agency?

Richard Wood: Yes. There are relationships where due to some sort ofmisunderstahding, or due to some sort ofthing that happened long ago, they have a bad view of the National Archives.

William Carpenter: Can you think ofany examples?

Richard Wood: Yes, I can. We had a records transfer of the Apollo 204 fire investigation, which included some photographs of the three men, the autopsy protocols, and things like that. NASA transferred them to us. We screened them very, very carefully, because there were personal privacy issues involved, and generally speaking you don't want that kind ofinformation splashed over the newspaper pages for the public. But we did release to a researcher portions ofphotographs containing just the space suits themselves, not the people in them, and not the bodies, but just the space suits. The agency was very, very upset over that, but we had judged that to be pictures of equipment, and we could not restrict it under the Freedom oflnfonnation Act, under the restrictions there. Their attitude and their reasoning was that to see the space suits would be able to visualize the bodies. And so, that was a very, very sore point and it went all the way up, at the time, to the Acting Archivist.

William Carpenter: Did that affect future records transfers at all? Did they hold records back because ofthis?

Richard Wood: I'm not sure whether they deliberately held records back, but they were reluctant to transfer. They were reluctant to deal with us in the same way afterwards.

William Carpenter: What are the main challenges you have faced in records accessioning-­ you have mentioned some ofthem--and have these challenges shifted? Are they any different now than they were ten or fifteen years ago?

Richard Wood: I think it is more work for us. We have to go out there and convince people that it is desirable for them to do what we would like them to do, which is to transfer their permanent records. That's been the emphasis in the past. Earlier in my career a lot of the emphasis was on citing the law. The Jaw says, "You must do this," and often the response to that is, "Well, we'll have your lawyers talk to our lawyers about this," so it gets up into a legal battle which, we all know, can last for years and years without a great deal ofresolution. But we have to work harder now. The reimbursable program has helped. A lot of the work that we have done in terms of providing records to the public; in the [Supreme Court Chief Justice] John Roberts confirmation, which has come in now, has raised our profile to do things, and has in some cases raised our credibility with other agencies. But I wouldn't want to press that point too far.

William Carpenter: My other questions have to do with organizational changes. NWML, the scheduling and appraisal people, are now a separate division. Do you have much overlap with what they do, with accessioning? It seems to me that accessioning has a little more to do with that kind of work, rather than with processing and declassification. What are your views on that?

Richard Wood: Well, they are all part ofone constant flow, that sounds like a kind of stereotypical response, but I think it really is. I think the relationship between records appraisal and actual accessioning is closer than it appears with the stovepipe-type infrastructure which often occurs. I think it would be good ifpeople that worked in records appraisal would be more conversant with their colleagues on the accessioning side, or in the reference side. There is a mechanism for this, because we do get the SHU, the Stakeholder Unit formats, to comment on; but a lot of times, the personal side of this enables me to go over to an agency with a records appraiser and explain what it is that happens after the records come in to the National Archives. And that oftentimes helps to clear up come ofthe preconceptions, or stereotypes, or misunderstandings that they may have about what the National Archives is.

William Carpenter: And that's just from your own experience?

Richard Wood: From my own experience, right. It also helps that I worked for almost five years in records appraisal, so I've kind ofseen life from both sides. CARPENTER. OK. The next bunch of questions have to so with processing and description. How have this agency's priorities for records processing changed, and what has driven those changes?

I think that the big change in processing has been the introduction of electronic finding aids, the Web, that kind ofthing. Also, and again this is just my general opinion, we often see expectations for processing that are really not realistic, in a sense that people will say, "Well, these records were transferred from the agency just last week. Why aren't they available right now?" And people oftentimes don't realize just how much time it does take to process a collection.

William Carpenter: These are [other] agency personnel?

Richard Wood: These are sometimes agency personnel, but more often, particularly ifthe records are controversial, like the.recent FBI "Official Confidential Files ofJ. Edgar Hoover," which are obviously very high-visibility records, people want to see them right away. That oftentimes weighs against the systematic processing in the way in which we like to do it, because ifthe volume is large, you have a larger problem as far as processing is concerned.

William Carpenter: Do you think the standard for processing at the National Archives will need to change? Do you think that the model of having a single archivist working on a large project where everything has to be reboxed and refoldered will have to be amended?

Richard Wood: I think that's going to have to be modified quite a bit. We just get so much material in that we really need to basically pick and choose what it is that we process. I would rather process everything ifI could, but I can't. The estimate for the material that we brought in under the P2005 Project, which is the 2005 regular transfer ofrecords from the WMRC, is about 21,000 cubic feet. We simply don't have the staff to process 21,000 cubic feet, so you have to make a cut someplace.

William Carpenter: Would you rather see 1000 feet of that processed very, very well, and the other 20,000 feet left on the stacks?

Richard Wood: It really depends on the interest that people exhibit in the records. All ofthe records that we bring in are permanent, but they are not all equally used. Nor do some people consider them to be equally valuable. So this is a kind of position that you have to negotiate from. In records appraisal I know that there are some areas when you are doing something where you know the records are permanent. You just know that they are; it is obvious that they are. Then on the other side there are records that are obviously not permanent. Then there's that big gray area in between. And it's the same thing with processing. There are records that we know need to be processed. And there are records that we know can sit on the shelf for quite some time very happily, unknown to processing. Then there is the large gray area, and the large gray area is where you have a good part of your controversy. I'm talking about controversy in the sense that, "I think this group ofrecords needs to be processed," and another person will say, "Well, no, I think that this group ofrecords should be processed."

William Carpenter: How is that controversy worked out? Is it worked out in conversations between Reference and Processing?

Richard Wood: Yes, that's what we are trying to do right now. We're trying to coordinate more closely with the reference units--the people who actually use the records--to find out which degree ofprocessing is needed for which degree ofrecords. If two researchers a year look at Record Group X, and fifty researchers a month look at Record Group Y, the chances are that Record Group Y is going be processed more than Record Group X. But that doesn't mean that the person who is pushing Record Group X doesn't have an opinion on the value ofthose records.

William Carpenter: To what extent does the security classification ofthose records determine the processing ofthose records?

Richard Wood: I think it is a characteristic that I've seen in research that researchers believe that the classified records are the more interesting. So there is an emphasis in getting classified material process, versus unclassified. Now that brings us up to the problems of declassification, of withdrawals and reviews, but in general people would obviously prefer to have the secret files ofthe Department ofthe Navy processed, as opposed to the general correspondence ofthe Department of the Navy.

William Carpenter: My next question has to do with finding aids. How have finding aids at the National Archives changes, and how substantive have those changes been? Has it just been a matter offormat, or has automation really changed the way in which we do what we do?

Richard Wood: I think it has primarily been a change in format. I know that some people would probably object to that statement, but I think that we still do finding aids in an electronic format in the same manner that we did on a typewriter. The format and the technology have changed in the sense that I can do a finding aid now at my desk when I am processing records as opposed to the days when I first started when you would do it on a typewriter, or you would send it up to the office clerical, presuming that you had an office clerical. The big change in technology as far as access to the public is concerned had been the Web. You can put this on the Web now, and you can get a lot more distribution for it. It is a lot more widely seen when it gets put up on the Web. Paper copies--! have a number of paper copies in my office. Some ofthem are very valuable, some of them have records in them that nobody's probably looked at for ten to twenty years. But on the Web that obviously is more available to people.

William Carpenter: Have you noticed that that has changed the research interest in the last few years.

Richard Wood: Oh, yes. Obviously when you get finding aids out and people look at them they are more likely to find records of interest to them than they would be. Ifyou are in Utica, New York, you can look on the Web and sees finding aid for records at the National Archives, and you can decide to come in or not for it. In the days before the Internet you would obviously write in to the National Archives, and your request would be forwarded to an archivist who was knowledgeable about those records, and he may or may not give you a finding aid or give you access to a finding aid. They simply weren't as available as they are now on the Web.

William Carpenter: Have researchers' expectations increased? Do they think everything should be on the Web?

Richard Wood: Yes. One ofthe things that I see in outside contacts with people who are not familiar with the National Archives; ifl go to meetings or something like that, or ifl meet somebody casually and tell them that I work for the National Archives, the question is always, "Oh, do you have everything on computer yet? Is everything computerized?" I have to tell them, "No, we do not have everything computerized, we have billions and billions ofpieces ofpaper. Nor do we have records on all Americans living and dead." You have to tell people that for genealogical matters or for other historical matters is that you have to touch the Federal Government in order to possibly have a record at the National Archives. It doesn't mean that just because you touched the Federal Government that you do, but you have to do it in that way. That's why ifl talk to people about genealogy, I'll say that this is a wonderful place for genealogy, but start in your local area first, talk to your living relatives, open your family Bible ifyou still have one, and find out who was born and who died. And also deal with your localities ifyou know where people lived, because that's where a lot of the material is. My experience with that, is that my grandfather was given his citizenship papers in 1905, I believe, and he got then through the District ofMaryland. It was a federal district, but in those days you could be naturalized in a state court, too .. So you may not have all your genealogical information at the National Archives. But the expectation is often that we have everything, and we don't.

William Carpenter: Do you do very much outreach like that?

Richard Wood: No, I don't, it's mostly...

William Carpenter: They need to change the tape ...

This is a continuation ofthe interview with Richard E. Wood, for the National Archives Assembly Legacy Project. We were talking about outreach and genealogy talks.

Richard Wood: Right. I don't talk specifically to people about genealogy; it is more or less as I meet them and they ask me, "What do you do?" "Well, I work for the National Archives." You also can spread the word to agencies, who oftentimes do not necessarily share the knowledge that not all records go to the National Archives. People tend to think that what they what they want is here. It may be here, or it may not be here.

William Carpenter: The next group ofquestions have to do with declassification. How involved have you been with the declassification side of processing.

Richard Wood: I think to my detriment I have not been involved that deeply. My work began in projects and records appraisal, and basically has continued in accessioning and projects. I know the general requirements ofit, as a supervisor, but I have to say that I have never actually done it, in the sense that I have looked at documents and decided whether they were fit to be released or whether they needed continued protection. I think that has been a problem in general through the Archives, in the sense that there has been a pretty strict division of labor, partially caused by the organizational structure that was set up some time ago, where you had a declass processing area, and you had a . declassification unit and a projects unit, and you a had a reference unit; and oftentimes the three would not meet at all, or only at certain points. So those points are like the tangents ofa circle, where they would meet only one particular place, and the rest ofus go off and do our own thing. I had very little direct working contact with the people at Suitland in the declassification division, but of course I knew them because we were all working in the same building. I knew what they were doing, but my work was not the same as theirs, so it was not the case that we were very well coordinated, at least in my opm1on.

William Carpenter: How would you evaluate the integration ofthe delass and processing units? Was it successful; is there still a break in culture ...?

Richard Wood: It's been a partial success. The partial success has been in terms ofthe people who have come in since there has been an amalgamation ofinitial processing and declassification, in the sense that they have started out with a clean slate. Obviously declassification review is not something that is ordinarily done in the outside world, so you have to come in and learn how to do !flat. Archival processing, on the other hand; you can learn at least how to do that in the various archives courses that are offered now throughout the country in various universities and colleges. But I think it has been that success in the sense that younger people, or people that are starting out their careers now, are more attuned to doing both at once, than what I consider to be the older generation, perhaps even my generation, where, "I am a project archivist," "I am a declass archivist," or "I am a reference archivist..."

William Carpenter: To what extent has there been resistance ...?

Richard Wood: I think there has been some, resistance as far as that is concerned. [Pause] Projects people will say, "Well, I've got to finish this project;" it's between what you know how to do and what you need to learn to do. Ifyou don't need to learn to do it, you don't do it, and you don't pay much attention to that part of the need. And obviously there is plenty ofneed to do processing. You could do processing for the rest ofyour career and never look at declass. On the other hand you could often do declass exclusively. But that is the old way.

William Carpenter: This has to do with administration. We have talked a little about this before. Describe the shifts in emphasis at the National Archives that occur when the Archivist ofthe United States changes. Has it been palpable? Have you been able to detect it immediately?

Richard Wood: I think the Archives, like any other bureaucratic organization, when the change from the top occurs, there may be continuity or there may be change. People wait to see what is going to happen. I know there was a controversy when John Carlin first came on board. This was a man who did not have a background in what people considered to be the traditional academic scholarly training that was typical of Archivists roughly from the beginning when the National Archives was established. But I know personally I supported it, because particularly in terms ofability to pursue one's interests on Capitol Hill, which is where all largesse flows from, that Carlin as an ex-governor and a more politically connected person would be able to do that better. I hope that my justification on that was at least partially fulfilled. Now we have another Archivist, Dr. Weinstein, who is basically from more in the mold of the older, scholarly people; but I have no idea, one presumes that he also is working the political side ofthe fence as all ofthese officials should. The jury is still out on that, but it is a change that occurs with every Archivist. Mr. Carlin's big emphasis was on electronic records. Now Dr. Wienstein has said that he wants to continue with that. ..

William Carpenter: There is no backing away now.

Richard Wood: Right.

William Carpenter: Would you recommend any changes in the organization ofthe National Archiyes? Ifyou had to reorganize NW, what would you do?

Richard Wood: [Pause] NW, when the organization came about, was an attempt to bring the lifecycle ofrecords into one organization. NWML for the records appraisal and scheduling part ofit, NWMD for initial processing and declassification, this kind of thing. I would personally like to see more inter-divisional activity between the two. I'm not sure exactly how that is done; you can mandate that it will happen, but the mandate will not necessarily ensure that it will happen. I would just like to see more use within the divisions ofthe expertise that various people have developed in terms ofareas in which they work.

William Carpenter: Would that involve more involvement by processing archivists in reference work, or...

Richard Wood: Yes, I think that it would. One ofthe things I thought that I noticed in my career was that records do not come to the public directly from an agency in Hollinger boxes with complete finding aids and folder lists. I mean, this has to be done by somebody, and people need to appreciate how much work that is. People need to appreciate when you are scheduling records how much work it is when you are trying to deal with an agency that wants to cooperate but doesn't understand what is involved in the schedule-writing process or in an appraisal-type environment. One ofthe things that I think has helped me was the fact that I worked in n,cords appraisal, so I know the difficulties that are involved with that, and I have worked in projects, so I know the difficulties involved with that. I have even on occasion worked in reference, so I know the difficulties that are involved in that. It enables me to hopefully get a better perspective when I have a problem as to what needs to be done. You balance: these records are very important, but they are not going to some here soon. Or these records are very important, they have come here, but they are in such a mess that they need to be processed before the public can look at them. But they need to be processed in a reasonably expeditious way, because at the same time you have the public coming in to the reference branch, saying, "Well these records have been transferred," like I said, "last week. Why aren't they ready? Why can't I have them right now?"

William Carpenter: Has the demise ofthe CIDS [Career Intern Development System] program, in which newly hired archivists are farmed out to various functions for a period oftime hindered interdepartmental communication? Or is the demise ofthe CIDS program a good thing?

Richard Wood: I always thought that the rotations ofthe CIDS program were one ofthe most valuable parts ofit. As a manager, you don't like to have somebody that is assigned to your unit that is going to be off on rotation for two of the three years in which they are developing, because obviously you need people to work in your particular area. But if you are going to do something like that you need to basically say that you are going to lose that individual for however long you are going to do it. But it is a short-term pain thing for a long-term gain, that is for the institution. But short-term it can be very disruptive for you to be supervising somebody whom you never see. I though the CIDS program was in some cases very, very academically oriented, with papers. I was in the CIDS program at the very .. .I think they called it CIDS then; but it certainly wasn't as formally set up as it later became. But I know that having a bachelor's, a master's, and a doctorate, hopefully I knew how to write. This is not always the case, but in most cases it is. So it seemed to me that a CIDS paper, quote-unquote, was somewhat unneeded, or certainly in my opinion not worth some ofthe costs that it had, which is that you have to sit down and write the paper. It was just like a long term paper; that's what many people thought it was. And that generated a great deal, I think, ofresentment of the program itself. But as far as the rotations were concerned, I know on my own rotations, I was in projects, I went to records appraisal, which was an interesting and an eye-opening thing. It does depend, however, on the willingness and ability ofthe gaining unit, that is the host unit, to give the incoming person something of value to do. '

William Carpenter: Not just busywork.

Richard Wood: Yes.

William Carpenter: Do you remember what your paper was on?

Richard Wood: I didn't have to do a paper, because at that time ... .

William Carpenter: Ah, excellent!

Richard Wood: By that time all ofthis had been hashed out. I do remember that there was a considerable amount of questioning on that. In the earlier days ofmy career, your archivists tended to be people from academia. Now you have people who are much more broadly rounded in things like information technology; you don't have to just be a historian or a political scientist to be an archivist anymore. Although certainly it helps.

William Carpenter: It does help. The last of the formal questions is, is there anything else you would like to talk about that we have not covered that might be ofvalue for NARA staff to know?

Richard Wood: Oh, I think that as an archivist and as a supervisor I think we have come a long way, but that we still have a long way to go. Particularly in terms of; well, some people believe that the management is horrible around here, that we are a bunch of hard-noses. Things have gotten a lot better in terms ofthe last years as far as the working environment is concerned. The Family and Medical Leave Act, credit time, that kind of thing would have been unheard of, or was unheard of when I started.

William Carpenter: What was the work environment like?

Richard Wood: The work environment when I started was that everybody started work at the same time, and everybody quit at the same time. Ifyou used sick leave it was because you were supposed to be sick, so in other words, ifyou were a new father or a new mother caring for your children, that didn't cut any ice. You sere supposed to just use annual leave. And I do remember the controversy over flex-time, when it first came in. One ofthe things that was considered when arguing against it, was that, oh, people will go on flex-time and they'll take Fridays and Mondays off, and we won't have any coverage, this kind ofthing. I remember the study that they did when they worked on the pilot program was that the greatest absenteeism because oftaking time offwere the administrative units rather than the units that actually dealt with the public, so that kind of weakened their case ...

William Carpenter: Ha, ha, right ...

Richard Wood: But I think that things have gotten better in terms ofthat.

William Carpenter: How hard was it for you to transition to be a supervisor?

Richard Wood: It can be a difficult transition ifyou have a lot ofproblem staff, and a lot of problems that hit you at the same period oftime. I was fortunate in that respect; I had a very good staff, and still, I think, have a very good staff. You can manage the problems pretty effectively. The biggest difference from being a regular, or non-supervisory archivist, or technician, or specialist, to becoming a supervisory person is that you find that you need a larger perspecfrye, but you find that you are not necessarily privy to the power that you are supposed to have or are perceived to have as a supervisor. There are certain things that I know about as a supervisor that for one reason or another I cannot impart to my staff until the time is right. But then again, I can't have somebody come in and say, "I would like you to do this," or, "I would like to do this," and I would say, "That can't be done because I can't do it." I can't say that this can be done; it is something that goes above me, or something that I can't do because ofregulations or something like that. So you find that you have a greater perspective, you have more sources ofinformation, but you do not necessarily have more power. I cannot simply wave my hand and say, "This is going to be done or not going to be done."

William Carpenter: Any other advice for the person who is going to be taking over after you?

Richard Wood: I remember telling people when I was earlier in this job that I thought the greatest asset in the supervisory position that I was in was flexibility. I said flexibility even more than knowledge, because you can usually find somebody who has more knowledge in a particular area than you do; if! can't work on this computer in a certain way, I can ask somebody who knows how to do it and they can probably do it in five minutes, whereas it would take me 45 minutes of frustration for something I would probably never get done anyway. You need to be able to adapt to what comes down the pike in position like this. That's what I would say: flexibility.

William Carpenter: OK. Anything else?

Richard Wood: I don't have anything.

William Carpenter: I don't have anything else either. That concludes this interview. It is about four minutes past 1:00. The subject was Richard E. Wood, the interviewer was William C. Carpenter.