National Endowment for the Humanities
On March 10, William L. Joyce, President of the Society of American Archivists, and Alan M. Kraut, Professor of History at American University, testified be fore the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior concerning the FY ’88 budget for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Joyce described the variety of ways NEH programs have major impact on improving and standardizing the work of archivists nationwide and urged current level funding for FY’88 instead of the Administration’s proposed $11.6 million cut. Commending the Endowment’s support of historical research, teaching, and public programs, Kraut testified to the pivotal role that NEH plays in his own scholarly development. He then emphasized the importance of the impartial refereed selection process conducted by the Endowment to assure that funding is unhampered by political or other parochial concerns. ”As valuable as the financial sup port offered by NEH is to the individual scholar,” he noted, “equally as important is the imprimatur of an NEH grant or fellowship.”
National Park Service
On March 13, I testified at a hearing before the House Subcommittee on National Parks and Public Lands, chaired by Rep. Bruce Vento (D MN), and urged support of H.R. 773, which prohibits the Secretary of the Interior from charging admission fees to National Historical Parks. When historic sites are well preserved and well interpreted, I noted that they serve the public as open texts and provide a valuable component to our educational system.
National Historical Publications and Records Commission
On April 2, Frederick J. Stielow, who teaches archives and records management at the University of Maryland, testified before the House Subcommittee on Treasury, Postal Service, and General Government urging an appropriation for FY ’88 of $5 million for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). For the seventh consecutive year the Administration has recommended zero funding for the NHPRC’s grants program. Describing the impact of this small agency, Stielow stressed that the NHPRC provides “major financial incentives for the emergence of modern archives” and plays an instrumental role in the “education, continuing education, and professionalization needed to provide properly trained experts for the archival files.” The Senate Subcommittee on Treasury, Postal Services, and General Government held hearings on April 10 for public witnesses to comment on appropriations for the NHPRC. Testifying on behalf of the NCC organizations, I stressed that NHPRC grants provide federal “seed” money that serves as genuine leverage for eliciting funds from private sources to sup port important documentary editing and records preservation projects.
Administration Establishes New Hurdles for Scholarly Use of Freedom of Information Act by Scholars
Official federal agency guidelines for implementing the recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) amendments will make it extremely difficult for historians to qualify for the new fee waivers. On October 17, 1986 Congress passed the Omnibus Drug Control Act that included several hastily crafted amendments to the FOIA. The initiative for the amendments came from Senators Hatch (R-UT) and Denton (R-AL), who sought to broaden FOIA exemptions for law enforcement and intelligence records. After some last minute negotiations the final law (Pub. L. 99-570) contained provisions that allow agencies to deny the existence of certain law enforcement and intelligence records and to establish fee schedules specifically designed to charge “commercial” requesters for the costs involved in searching, reviewing, and copying the requested documents.
In the spirit of the original intent of the legislation to provide open access to government information, the act does include a fee waiver for educational/scientific institutional requesters and representatives of the news media. In commenting on the new amendments, Representative Glenn English (D-OK) stated, “The new fee waiver standard should be liberally construed, to encourage full and complete disclosure of information,” and he added “the new standard is specifically intended to make it easier for more requesters to qualify for the fee waiver.”
In January OMB printed a draft of the proposed guidelines in the Federal Registaer and requested comments. The NCC, as well as individual historians, responded with specific recommendations regarding appropriate terms and procedures for scholarly requests for fee waivers.
However, despite English’s optimistic words and the comments of organizations and individuals on the early draft, on March 27 the Office of Management and Budget published in the Federal Register agency guidelines that will only intensify the problems facing historians who wish to use the FOIA, Three portions of the new agency guidelines are particularly disturbing.
First, although the law specifies that news media representatives and educational and scientific institutions, whose purpose is scholarly or scientific research, will pay duplication costs only, the guidelines will make it difficult for historians to qualify for fee waivers. The 0MB guidelines state, “To be eligible for inclusion in this category, requesters must show that the request is being made as authorized by and under the auspices of a qualifying institution and that the records are not sought for a commercial use.”
Since the initiative for historical research generally comes from individual scholars and not from sponsoring institutions, academic historians may well encounter problems in proving to an agency that the request is “under the auspices of’ and “authorized by” their institution. The guidelines make clear that a request written on the letterhead of an educational institution will not alone be adequate proof for a fee waiver.
Second, the guidelines make a sharp distinction between the individual and the institutional need for the research request and exclude independent scholars and students from qualifying for fee waivers. “A student who makes a request in furtherance of the completion of a course of instruction is carrying out an individual goal,” the guidelines state, and thus “the request would not qualify” under this provision.
And third, the guidelines require that agencies determine that a request from an academic scholar is “in furtherance of the institution’s program of scholarly research and not for a commercial use.” While these instructions are certainly open to interpretation, there are indications that if a publication results from the research, even a scholarly monograph with limited financial remunerations, this would be considered “commercial use.”
The irony of the new guidelines is that news people who seek yesterday’s “smoking gun” will be given free search, while historians who seek twenty- and thirty-year old documents to contribute to a greater public understanding of the operations and activities of our government will be stymied in their efforts by prohibitive costs.
During the April 3 meeting of the National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History, the NCC member organizations developed plans for alerting Congressional committees with oversight responsibility for the FOIA of the serious implications of the new guidelines for historians. Concerns about the March 27 OMB guidelines should be addressed to: Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Technology and Law of the Senate Judiciary Committee, US Senate, Washington, DC 20501; and Representative Glenn English, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Government Information of the House Government Operations Committee, US House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515. Since both Leahy and English have expressed dismay at the various tactics used by this Administration to establish hurdles to prevent legitimate use of the FOIA, there is some hope that sufficient pressure will force a reconsideration of these guidelines scheduled to go into effect on April 27, 1987. If you wish more information on this issue contact the NCC, 400 A St., SE, Washington, DC 20003.
