Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Records Liaison Officers Newsletter
September 2006
Research and Development Records Outreach Project--An Update
In the March 2006 RLO Newsletter, we announced the beginning of a new free service from Archives and Records. In her capacity as the new Special Projects Archivist, Beret Ranelletti, the former Assistant Archivist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, took charge of identifying and accessioning Research and Development records from all of the Lab divisions at no cost to the divisions. Since this work began, Beret has contacted a number of you to assist her in locating and archiving R&D materials from significant projects in your divisions. These meetings have resulted in a number of R&D archiving projects, including the following:
Completed:
Robert Johnson files (Directorate; currently LBNL Homeland Security POC, previously Initiatives Development)
Charles Shank Director's files (Directorate)
DiLepton Spectrometer files (Nuclear Science Division, document the DiLepton Spectrometer experiments carried out on the Bevalac)
Glen Lambertson files (AFRD, document the 55 year career of senior scientist Glen Lambertson at the Berkeley Lab; he was a major force behind the success of the Bevatron)
AFRD Division Director files
Mike Nitschke files (Nuclear Science Division, document the OASIS project and the SuperHILAC)
John Hundale Lawrence (Life Sciences)
Simon Yu files (AFRD)
Eleanor Lee Technical Progress Documents (EETD)
Art Poskanzer (Nuclear Science Division - Research and Development Administrative Files)
88 Inch Cyclotron Proposal Advisory Committee Files
In Process:
Ed Lofgren files (AFRD)
John Corlett files (AFRD)
Aloke Chatterjee files (Life Sciences)
Howard Matis files (Nuclear Science)
George Smoot Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) Project Case Files (Physics)
In addition to meeting with individual scientists, Beret and I have given presentations at the division level to the Accelerator and Fusion Research Division, Environmental Energy Technologies Division, the Computational Research Division and National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center and Nuclear Science Division. A presentation was also given to the Division Business Council. Special thanks to the RLO's who arranged for ARO to give presentations to their respective divisions: Martha Condon (AFRD), JoAnne Lambert (EETD), Adam Stone (CRD and NERSC), Dianna Jacobs (NSD). Also thanks to Diana Attia who arranged for the DBC presentation
For those of you who have not met with Beret yet, you might like to download a copy of the presentation given to EETD to get an idea of what the group level presentation entails. The full R&D schedule is available online and, as part of our presentations, we provide a brief three-page summary of the schedule. As we understand that the mission and research focus of each of the scientific divisions are unique, we look forward to working with the RLO's to tailor any presentations and/or handouts to their division's individual needs.
Beret will be continuing to contact RLO's regarding the archiving of R&D records and you should feel free to contact her yourself. Her extension is 4685 and her email is [email protected].
Just a Reminder...
For all records not covered by the Research and Development schedule, if a customer would prefer to have all processing of their records done by a professional Archivist and Records Analyst, the Archives and Records Office offers a Records Processing Recharge Service. This recharge system will provide the following services: free consultation and, with an account number, analysis, scheduling, boxing, transportation, weeding, and indexing of laboratory records. Again, to emphasize, Archives and Records provides free consultation regarding all laboratory record and often times, when it comes to the non-R&D records, after the free consultation, offices will decide that they would prefer to do the remainder of the transfer work themselves.
Archives, Records and Information Management Training
Over the past two years, in addition to the training that Archives and Records offers to RLO's, ARO has also provided more general training to the Lab population at large. This training was offered under what was then known as the Administrative Services Department (ASD) Academy. The first was offered in November 2004, was entitled Records at Berkeley Lab---From the Cradle to the Grave, and provided a general overview of records and information management at LBNL. The second presentation, entitled Records Management at Berkeley Lab--What to Keep, What to Toss, was given in June 2005 and provided guidance on what Lab materials needed to be archived and which did not. These presentations are now hosted at the Berkeley Lab Institutes's (BLI's) Presentations web page. In order to facilitate to access to these various training resources, an Archives and Records Management Training web page has been added to the ARO web site, providing links to all training presentations given by ARO. In addition to referring employees in you division to our email address ([email protected]) or main phone number (extension 5525), please feel free to direct them to the new training web page. Also, if anyone in your division would like a training session, we can adapt any existing presentation to their special needs or create a new customized session for them. Just let us know.
Transfer of Records From LLNL to LBNL
Recently records from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory were transferred to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. These records were related to the biological research of DNA repair of Dr. Andrew Wyrobek and Dr. Francesco Marchetti. Dr's Wyrobek and Marchetti were transferring employment to LBNL and the records were needed for their ongoing research at LBNL. The RPM states that "Individuals do not own Laboratory records and do not have the authority to dispose of them or transfer records to another institution" and the Archives and Records Office, in cooperation with RLO's and Human Resources, works to prevent the "alienation" of records (unauthorized transfer of records to another institution) and the unauthorized disposal and/or removal of records from the Laboratory. However, in this case, the records and the researchers were moving from one Department of Energy laboratory to another. In order to facilitate this move while still managing these Records according to the RPM, DOE orders, and federal regulations, the LBNL Archives and Records Office and the Records and Archives unit at LLNL worked together to implement a formal Investigator Records Transfer Agreement between the two labs. The key points of the agreement were:
Transferred materials were indexed before transfer.
Records would be used, managed, and disposed of consistent with DOE Records Schedules, DOE Orders, and LBNL standards and guidance.
After transfer, access or technical issues or access questions would be referred to the LBNL Records Manager, who would work directly with the scientists.
Archives and Records is committed to managing the Labs records in a way that meets the various legal and regulatory requirements and still supports and assist scientific research. The LLNL-LBNL Investigator Records Transfer Agreement is an excellent model for similar transfer of records and personnel between DOE national labs. We want to encourage any RLO's or HR personnel who have similar situations in their divisions to contact ARO so we can work with them to effect similar agreements.
RLO Newsletters Online
Starting with the March 2006 issue, the RLO Newsletters will be posted online on the Online RLO Reference Sources web page.
