tion from the outset. Yet traditionalists have argued that this is impossible to do and still preserve an adequate record of the nation's public and political life. It may be that the study commission will uphold this point of view. Nevertheless, in light of nature's seeming law that things become ever more complicated, archivists of all persuasions must expect to meet increasing complexity in the filing schemes of elected officials' papers. In short, perhaps the study commission will conclude that records managers must completely revise the classification of files of Congress and the president to assure that they keep separate their personal and political matters from their public responsibilities.

To return to the problem of the political freedom of an elected official whose files may be declared to be public property: If the public property claim is to be asserted generally, the study commission must examine whether and to what extent an elected official's freedom to act, compromise, associate, and defend himself from attack is diminished. The commission must examine with the utmost care the philosophical bases for restricting access in light of personal freedom and the concurrent need of the public to know how its elected officials execute their trust. Furthermore the study commission must examine the basis in law for protecting these competing claims. Should it be decided, for example, that only the policy of a sitting Congress safeguards the elected official's right to restrict access to files, then another Congress can reverse that policy in another day and mood. If, on the other hand, it is recognized that the official's right to restrict access is grounded in the law of personal property, then the restrictions can be abrogated only by due process of law. This is the core of the

constitutional issue that the study commission must face. Other corollary issues flow from this central issue. For instance, if the public property claim is asserted, it then becomes a question whether the files of members of Congress are subject to the right of public inspection that so many citizens are availing themselves of today. And, if so, what becomes of the privacy of those who correspond with the president or members of Congress?

The study commission will have a difficult mission. It will either have to make hard choice between the right of private property and the right of public accessibility, or it will have to devise a compromise solution that will resolve the philosophical conflict in a way that meets the demands of our political system. In devising a better way of ensuring adequate documentation of our national life, the commission will have to improve upon a system that has both met those demands and preserved property and accessibility rights with considerable success.

I am confident, however, that the establishment of the study commission is the best way to achieve a better system. Study commissions have often overcome great difficulties in organizing governmental efforts in the past: the creation of a national archives system was brought about by the efforts of a number of such commissions. The Brownlow committee of 1936-40 established the executive office of the president and improved the efficiency of the executive branch, and the Hoover commissions of 1949 and 1955 overhauled the whole organization of the executive branch to make it more responsive to the demands of society. I am confident that this study commission can meet with the same level of success in an area of equal complexity.

Several years ago the Department of State, the

oldest and most conservative executive department, began to plan a new automated document system (ADS) for its enormous central file, the permanent record of all information pertaining to the formulation and execution of U.S. foreign policy. Under the ADS, reliable high-speed search and retrieval is possible because the information is stored in a computer and on microfilm rather than on paper. This revolutionary new system has important consequences for the entire government as well as for the National Archives.

Since the records in the system will eventually be transferred to the National Archives, the State Department sought the advice and assistance of archivists, records managers, and computer specialists in the National Archives and Records Service. In 1971 the archivist of the United States, James B. Rhoads, appointed a special committee to study the new system; the committee reported to him in July 1972. Close contacts have continued.

The purpose of the following summary is to describe the system, its potential usefulness, and the problems it poses for NARS and for

researchers. To understand the new system, it may be useful to compare it with the old one. For instance, how does someone do research today in State Department records of the 194549 period? What kind of filing system was used then and what finding aids are there to identify the records? And how will someone research the records of the 1973-77 period?

About 750,000 documents-communications between Washington and foreign service posts, diplomatic notes, memorandums, special reports, and correspondence of long-term interest - have entered the system since it began operating in July 1973. The texts of telegrams are filed by electronic means and converted to microfilm. About half of them are indexed automatically because the originator uses TAGS (traffic analysis by geography and subject) codes; the rest are reviewed in detail and indexed by analysts in the Foreign Affairs Reference and Document Center. Communications written on paper, airgrams, diplomatic notes, and the like, are first microfilmed and then index entries of them are stored in the computer.

Access to the system is gained through the terminals, which are connected to a central

computer. At each terminal there is a typewriter keyboard on which requests are typed. Typing the request triggers the computer to search the data stored in it. The response is then displayed on a cathode ray tube (CRT). By simply typing out the reference number of a telegram, for instance, the text of the telegram is made to appear on the CRT. If a paper copy of it is needed, a teletypewriter connected to the CRT prints the text, on command. When the reference number is not known, other index terms may be entered. By linking them with the text, the computer retrieves the needed information.

If "Bonn," "foreign investments," "Egypt," and "July 1974" were typed on the keyboard, the CRT would display all references to documents containing messages to or from the U. S. Embassy in Bonn during July 1974, concerning West German investments in Egypt. If there are too many documents in the response, the search may be narrowed; for example, by asking for classified documents only, or for those that mention a person's name.

Current plans call for holding the texts of telegrams in the system for 3 years. Thereafter, they will be stored only on microfilm, which will serve as the permanent record. Index references to telegrams and other kinds of documents that have historic value will be held permanently in the system, but it will be possible to erase texts of routine administrative documents.

The State Department filed most of its records for the 1910-49 period by subject according to a decimal classification system and divided them into 20-, 10-, and 5-year blocks. Records for this period are currently kept in 8,134 archives boxes (3,389 linear feet). There are three indexes on 3- by 5-inch slips, totaling 2,759 linear feet, that serve as finding aids for the records. The subject index contains a slip for each document and follows the same arrangement as the records. The source index contains a slip for each document arranged by sender and by date. The name index is arranged alphabetically by the sender or receiver of a document, usually a private individual, and it sometimes includes slips for persons mentioned in the documents. Each slip shows the sender and receiver, date, decimal file number, subject file, and a synopsis of the document. To begin research in the records of this period it is necessary to know the subject file

or the decimal file number. This information may be obtained from the Foreign Relations series or other published source, the classification manual for the decimal filing system, or from the reference archivist. A researcher may presently use indexes and ask to examine documents located in any of several different files. The archivist must then locate the box, find the document, charge it out to the researcher, and later return the document to its place. Alternatively, a researcher may ask to see all of the records in a specific file. The archivist locates the boxes, reviews the file, removes documents that are security-classified or otherwise restricted, charges the boxes out to the researcher, copies documents, if indicated, and returns the boxes to the shelves.

Since all records of the 1973-77 period in the central file will be filed on microfilm, the records of that 5-year period can be stored rather cheaply in less than 200 linear feet of space. The indexes, which will probably be stored on magnetic tape, will be more expensive and difficult to maintain. Although the State Department is willing to transfer the entire index on magnetic tape to the National Archives, it is possible that after 10 years or so the department will convert the index to subject and source indexes to be stored on microfiche or microfilm. Whether the researcher will be able to use a terminal equipped with a CRT to locate references to documents depends on the cost of computer storage and on the ease of finding documents on microfiche or in microfilm indexes.

The researcher, guided by published citations, a thesaurus of 3,300 subject terms, and the archivist, must decide which indexes to use and then make a list of the documents desired. The archivist can furnish either rolls of microfilm or paper copies taken from the microfilm. Because the documents are microfilmed in chronological order, 100 documents on a single subject could be on as many different microfilm rolls. Electronic microfilm readerprinters will simplify the archivist's search, however. When the frame number is punched on a keyboard, the microfilm will advance within seconds to the proper frame, and the document can then be read or copied.

A computer-created index offers the capability of retrieving information more quickly and in greater quantity than the current system.

Use of a computer permits each document to be indexed under as many as 16 concepts, 6 personalities, and 6 organizations; that will be a good deal more useful than the average of 1.3 terms by which documents in the earlier decimal file were indexed. Professional analysts, experienced in retrieval, will do the indexing instead of lower-grade file clerks. It is still too early to state with certainty the method of storing the indexes. The State Department has about 20 years to develop the indexes before the records are transferred to NARS, and NARS will not operate the system until it is working effectively. It is hoped that NARS will also be able to use the computer index.

Although the indexes will enable the researcher to find all related documents readily, he or she will not be able to browse through a subject file since the documents will be in chronological order. It will be much easier, on the other hand, for NARS to provide copies of lists of documents. Researchers using the 194549 records frequently make such requests now, and it is a time-consuming process for NARS to find the documents and make copies of them.

The State Department will probably continue to create some special subject files on paper, perhaps for the Historical Office as well as for other units. More likely, microfilm rolls devoted to special subjects will be created. Depending on their archival value, these records may also be accessioned. Copies of special files and their indexes might be offered to institutions and private researchers for a fee.

Access to information on microfilm rolls will be a problem for the nonofficial researcher, given current restrictions. A roll may contain documents classified by outside authorities or governments, material that may not be declassified by the State Department. Some documents will also raise questions of privacy; such documents are usually not opened to research for 50 or 75 years.

Who will pay the price of doing research? The assistance now provided by archivists is free, although there is a charge for the copying

of documents. We cannot do people's research for them, but we can search the records for the answer to a specific question. No one has yet decided, however, whether a computer search of the index should be done free of charge. Until the question is asked, there will be no way of knowing whether there are 10 or 1,000 documents on the list. And if there is no general access to restricted rolls of microfilm, will the researcher be charged for copies that must be made of the documents that he is permitted to read?

The microfilm rolls will also contain many routine administrative documents, generally not worth keeping permanently but that cannot be removed from the microfilm. There may not even be indexes to enable the retrieval of such documents. The department has no plan now to film those documents separately.

One of the objectives of the new system is to avert the need of retaining large files of records scattered through many offices. If everything is stored in the central file, most of the files kept in offices-or lot files as they are called-will have no permanent value. For researchers, though, some of the most interesting documents are the chits attached to despatches or memorandums, summarizing and evaluating them. If action officers annotate their working copy of a document, their views will not appear on the microfilm. Memorandums of record that are not distributed, or that are sent from one office to another without entering the document system, create another problem. Archivists will still find it necessary to accession office files of permanent value.

It will, at any rate, be necessary to retain paper copies of documents of intrinsic value, such as treaties, memorandums of conversations of the secretary of state, and letters of resignation by the president or vice president. In addition, the relationship of the microfilmed central file of State Department records and the separate file kept by the executive secretariat is currently being examined and clarified.

During the past decade or so a number of sig

nificant developments have occurred in both the history and genealogy fields. For the most part these trends have remained separate. The traditional separation of their activities, often accompanied by mutual disdain, has allowed historians to pay only slight attention to genealogy and genealogical activities and has divorced genealogists from the professional work of historians. A quick review of their publications indicates the degree to which both work in separate worlds.1 Yet developments in these fields are moving in similar directions, sufficient to give rise to the notion that closer cooperation between them would be mutually advantageous.2 When the social historian begins to work with family history and to focus on a broader network of kinship relationships over time, and the genealogist begins to spend time and effort in indexing the same manuscript census returns that historians use, it is time for the two groups to examine their common ground.

1 See, for contrast, The Genealogical Helper (Logan, Utah) and the Journal of Social History (Pittsburgh).

2 Historians will be especially interested in Phillip R. Kunz, ed., Selected Papers in Genealogical Research, Institute of Genealogical Studies, Brigham Young University (ca. 1972), which are studies in social history that draw upon the archives of the Mormon Church.

This essay attempts to foster such a relationship. It comes from the author's long involvement in both fields. On the one hand I have devoted considerable attention to working out concepts and research resources for a more grass-roots type of social history; on the other, my first interest in history, some four decades ago, was through genealogy, which became a hobby that has persisted through the years. As social history has come to focus on family-related institutions, I have found the information and insights from genealogical investigations to be very helpful in dealing with matters such as migration and vertical mobility, changes in family size and life cycle, and the impact of modernization on traditional values and practices in religion, family, and recreation. All this suggests the enormously valuable role that a more informed and imaginative genealogy could play in broadening historical inquiry and insight.

At the same time I have been involved with attempts to make usable the large quantity of historical evidence available in archives of local, state, and national governments, as well as private sources, about the ordinary everyday activities of people, in order to provide the research base for more effective social history. I have been impressed with the fact that genealogists have gone after such records to a far greater extent than have historians. The federal manuscript census returns were used