James H. Lesar, President	(202) 393-1921

Assassination Archives and Research Center

918 F Street, NW,

Washington, D.C. 20004

The Digital A.A.R.C.

Preliminary Project Proposal

I. INTRODUCTION

The Digital A.A.R.C. Project will organize, scan and make accessible the JFK [and other] assassination-related holdings of the Assassination Archives and Research Center (A.A.R.C., pronounced "Ark").

The Project as planned will develop in four phases:

Investigational Phase	1. Creation of a detailed project proposal

2. Identification of principal participants

Proof of Principle Phase	1. Development of methods

2. Classification system

3. Prioritization of documents

4. Production of initial CD-ROMs

5. Enlistment of core topical experts

Implementation Phase	1. System installation

2. System documentation and training

3. Network of experts expanded

Production Phase	1. Production of CD-ROM sets

2. Establishment of on-line services

3. Expansion to other collections

4. Export of model to other projects

About the A.A.R.C.

The Assassination Archives and Research Center was co-founded in 1984 by two Washington attorneys, James H. Lesar, Esq., who has long served as its President, and Bernard Fensterwald, Esq. (deceased), for the purpose of establishing a permanent archive to "....acquire, preserve and disseminate information" that would deepen the public's awareness, understanding and knowledge concerning the occurrence and implications of politically motivated assassinations. (See Appendix A for current brochure.)

The A.A.R.C. is renowned as housing the largest private archive in the world devoted to literature, including official records and documents, which pertains to political assassinations in general, and to that in particular of our 35th President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. To enable its members to remain well-informed, and abreast of all pertinent developments, it publishes a newsletter called the A.A.R.C. Quarterly. (See Appendix B for latest issue.)

The A.A.R.C. is an educational, 501(C)(3), tax-exempt organization; its Employer Identification Number 52-1354369; donations in support of its work are tax-deductible, under Section 170 of the Internal Revenue Code.

Project Objectives

The aims of this project are to:

1. facilitate fruition of the A.A.R.C.'s founding mission; and,

2. serve the public interest by enhancing public access to critical records of our social and political history.

Fruition of the project's objectives will enable achievement of not only the A.A.R.C.'s founding mission, but also fulfill the apparent intent of the 102nd United States Congress, as signified by its unanimous enactment of the "President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992" (A.R.C.A.; Public Law No. 102-
526). In compliance with the mandate as set forth and defined in that legislation, the National Archives and Records Administration (N.A.R.A.) formally established, on December 28, 1992, the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection.

The Collections

The A.A.R.C. is in possession of numerous large and pertinent archival collections of declassified government documents. The centerpiece of its holdings, and the initial focus of the Digital A.A.R.C. Project is the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection. By an exclusive agreement with the National Archives, the A.A.R.C. has obtained duplicate copies of all 400,000 records--over 4,500,000 pages--released to N.A.R.A..

From August, 1993, up till the present, an array of U.S. national security, military, and intelligence agencies have acceded to the mandate of the Records Collection, expressly stipulating the "....full and immediate disclosure of all assassination-related records." The formal procedure of records release was administered by the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board (A.R.R.B.). The Board's term expired on September 30, 1998, but records are yet being released and administrative processing of the documents, continues.

Photocopies of all records in the Collection are available to the public at the N.A.R.A. facility in College Park, MD, for the price of 10 cents per page if copied on- site by an individual researcher, or 25 cents per page, if sent via postal delivery. The A.A.R.C., in turn, sells photocopies of all its holdings, including those made from the official Collection, at a rate (for its members) of 12½ cents per page.

Utilization of the Records Collection has been greatly impeded by, among other factors, the lack of a fully descriptive and operational index and systemized scheme of categorization. Thus, full disclosure, as envisioned by the Records Collection Act, has yet to be fully accomplished insofar as the documents are not as yet fully accessible. The Digital A.A.R.C. Project will accelerate the rate and optimize the manner by which all records which comprise this Collection, may be made truly accessible to the research community, and thereby, the general public. The Assassination Records Collection is an invaluable resource for those who comprise an ever-growing, national and international "community of interest." All of the active participants in this undertaking are dedicated to facilitating study, research and analysis of these events, and long have embraced an abiding commitment to enhancing awareness of politically motivated assassinations, most especially that of the United States' 35th President.

The Project Team

The Project is co-ordinated by Lenny Mather (Cambridge, MA); it receives strategic and technical support from Anthony Marsh (Somerville, MA); Paul Eagle (Amherst, MA); and Rex Bradford (Ipswich, MA); Mr. Mather and Mr. Marsh also provide historical insight and active engagement with the research community.

II. PROJECT OUTLINE

A. Investigational Phase

The Project has evolved to its current development by the volunteered service of an informal team of those who are contributing their specific expertise: in hardware and software system design; information management; and late 20th century American history. Preparing a complete, and formal, Project Proposal will entail an effort which is beyond our economic capacity, in the absence of adequate financial compensation. Once funding has been arranged, discussions may ensue with product vendors, service bureaus, and subject experts, to engage their professional input and participation. After several months of focused attention to these and similar issues, the Project's specific participants, and its components, and the options available for proceeding, should become clear and will be formally presented in the final and formal Proposal.

Requirements:

1.	Salary for those participants under contract to perform the work of coordination, investigation, and documentation will be necessary to proceed.

2.	No additional equipment is required; all participants have the necessary computer and telecommunications resources.

B. Proof of Principle Phase

The purpose of this phase is to develop methods and procedures capable of achieving the goals of the Project. The following areas will be addressed:

1. Classification system

2. Prioritization of documents

3. Digitization and recognition

4. Production of initial CD-ROMs

5. Enlistment of core topical experts

B.1.	Organizing the Documents

Before digitization can begin in earnest, the millions of pages in possession of the A.A.R.C., must be inventoried and organized into a customized system of classification. Each document will be labeled in a machine-readable manner, automatically fed into scanners, and both the electronic and paper versions tracked thereafter by their individually unique identification codes. The codes will be as fully congruent as possible with N.A.R.A.'s own Records Identification Form numbering system.

Specifically, document preparation is necessary to:

1)	Verify that the documents are physically appropriate for automated scanning equipment; that they have legible ID numbers assigned, etc.

2)	Organize the documents chronologically in high-level subject categories (e.g., "Oswald in Mexico," "New Orleans," "Dallas," "the E.R. at Parkland Hospital," "the autopsy at Bethesda," and so forth) to elaborate further on their current, very simple delineation by issuing agency (e.g., CIA, FBI, HSCA).

Requirements:

This phase requires no special equipment and only a cursory knowledge of the subject matter, since categorization at this stage will be at the highest level only. This work will be performed at the A.A.R.C., in Washington, DC.

B.2.	Digitization and Recognition

Once organized, a prioritized list of document sets to be digitized can be prepared. Document sets judged most important to the research community will be scheduled for digitization first.

The output of the scanning process would be electronic files in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF); each file containing a one or multi-page document. Adobe's "Image with Hidden Text" format variant is most appropriate for this Project, since a high-quality image of the page is available for viewing while the text is also available to search engines. In its unedited form, the text might only be 95% or even 90% accurate. Yet, the gist would be instantly available for full-text searching (something not possible at all at the National Archives) and that would be a great boon to many researchers.

Requirements

Digitizing a collection of documents of this size was, until recently, a daunting technical challenge. Such feats are becoming increasingly common as the performance of both hardware and software advances. The current options for this Project are:

1.	Two or three Pentium-class computers dedicated to scanning, located at the A.A.R.C., or a suitable location nearby. Each station consists of a PC running Windows NT, a high-speed sheet-fed scanner, and appropriate software (probably Adobe Acrobat Capture). The cost of each station would be $5000 - $8000, with more than half the cost devoted to the scanner itself.

2.	A "high-end" scanning station capable of greater throughput, perhaps 5-10 pages per minute. The cost of such systems is quite high but it is expected that a significant saving of time and operator's salary would ensue from their use.

3.	Out-source the scanning process to a service bureau is the least desirable option. Presumably, each box of documents would have to leave the A.A.R.C. for a period of time, which would increase the potential for loss and the amount of labor involved. Also, the scanning process would not be entirely within the control of the Project's own technical consultants. It may well become clear that a customized system will be found is required to satisfy the unusually demanding needs of our material and its intended uses.

Each page could require up to 100K for storage (if scanned at 300 dots per inch, which provides excellent visual detail). Thus the entire A.A.R.C. collection would reside in roughly a few hundred gigabytes of storage, a scale now practical with DVD-ROM or hard-drive arrays.

B.3.	Access and CD-ROM Production

Soon after the initiation of scanning, access to the data through the Internet and CD-Rom publication could begin. Researchers will be able to identify relevant documents by reference to the A.A.R.C. classification scheme or to N.A.R.A.'s RIF numbers. Topical experts will be able to identify sets of documents as special collections, and CD-ROM copies of these sets could be made in quantity and distributed.

Pricing

Presuming that payments to the A.A.R.C. for this service should at least cover the costs, while not expected to compensate for development of the system, then such nominal charges might be: $10 toward the costs of media and processing, and perhaps, 1 or 2 cents per pages of document.

Requirements

1	On-line distribution will incur the following costs:

a)	Web server PC with large storage capacity

b)	On-going costs of high-speed Internet connection.

2.	Dedicated computer for CD-ROM production, networked to the server. Up to 5000 pages may fit onto a single CD-ROM, making this distribution mode ideal for large requests.

3.	This aspect of the project can be performed at any location, i.e, proximity to the A.A.R.C. in Washington is not important. Personnel will be needed during this phase to:

a)	Manage the computer system

b)	Develop and maintain the web site

c)	Oversee the scanning of documents

d)	Operate the scanners

e)	Process requests for CD-ROMs.

Thus, a small staff of 2 or 3 people could run the entire project, assisted by interns or volunteers to help run the scanning stations. One of the staff members should be a skilled computer administrator and programmer.