Introduction
DDRS is an online database of a collection of over 75,000 declassified documents. The collection covers the domestic and the international scene for the period from World War II to the 1970s and includes documents in diverse formats, for example memos, cables, correspondence, field reports, situation reports, extensive background studies and minutes of meetings. Among excluded categories are Government Printing Office publications, treaties & agreements, statistics and legislation.
Documents can be searched full-text, viewed as a digital image in their original format, including any annotations or deletions. It is a useful resource for information on people, places, events, dates and political trends.
Declassification
In 1972 President Nixon ordered thousands of post World War II classified documents to be declassified. The original 30-year classification rule was reduced to 20 years, although the decision to declassify is still upon discretion and tends to exempt material of continued national security, particularly relating to personnel and technology. Since 1975 documents requested by the public under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) have been commercially available in print, microform and, from 1999, online as DDRS.
Other online US official publications resources
GPO (Government Printing Office)
Access
- On-campus without password
- Off-campus with personal Athens password.
Searching
DDRS offers full-text searching as well as keyword searching in the following fields:
Source
/ Searches the name of the source institution, organization, or committee responsible for issuance of a document.Title/abstract / The majority of the government documents within this database are not titled. Instead, an abstract consisting of a brief description of the document contents has been provided for each document and includes key descriptors related to topics covered as well as names of individuals associated with the creation and/or contents of the document.
Keyword/Subject / Searches in Title/Abstract, Source, subject descriptors, and the first fifty words of text of the document.
Basic search(default)
To search the entire database for the presence of any word or words within a range of key fields or within the full text of documents.
Advanced search
To search on a word or words occurring within key fields and the full text of documents, as well as limit their searches on the values of several fields of information.
Advanced searching offers additionally the option to combine different searches and to limit searches to:
Issue date / Source institution[1] / CompletenessDate declassified / Classification Level[2] / Number of Pages
Document type / Sanitization[3] / Gale Record Number
To select more than one, press the Ctrl key (PC) or Command key (Mac) while clicking.
Phrase searching
Find an exact phrase with the help of the W proximity operator.
Examples: “copper mining”
copper w1 mining (copper within 1 word of mining)
Punctuation
Hyphen. A hyphen (-) used between two words is considered part of the term. If you are searching for a word or phrase that normally contains a hyphen, include the hyphen:
Example: “self-governing"
Boolean operators
Boolean operators allow you to define the presence or non-presence of a search term(s). There are three Boolean operators: And, Or, Not
Note: If an operator appears in a title you are searching for, e.g. Office of Science and Technology, it will still be interpreted as a search operator. Use phrase searching instead, e.g. “office of science and technology”.
Andretrieves works containing both term1 and term2.
Example:racism and apartheid
Orretrieves works containing either term1 or term2 or both.
Example:Rhodesia or Zimbabwe
Notretrieves works excluding specified term(s)
Example:racism not nationalism will find works which include racism but not nationalism
not China will retrieve all works which exclude China
Operators may be combined for multiple search terms, using parentheses to preserve Boolean logic.
Example:(invasion or occupation) and (Afghanistan or Czechoslovakia)
Proximity searching
Proximity searching allows you to define the relative location of the search terms. There are two proximity operators:
w (within)retrieves works containing term1 within the specified number of words term2 and in the same order.
Example: Thatcher w4 Gorbachev will find Gorbachev within 4 words after Thatcher.
N (near)retrieves works containing term1 within the specified number of words before or after term2.
Example:disarmament near10 'soviet union' will find Soviet Union 10 words before or after disarmament.
Note: Stopwords are not counted. If w is not followed by a number it will be searched as a term.
Wildcards/Truncation
Wildcard and truncation operators are useful for finding words with variant spellings either in the middle or the end of a search string. There are two operators:
*wildcard for any string of characters
Example:Africa* would retrieve Africa, African, Africans
?required single-character wildcard.
Example: defen?e would retrieve defense as well as defence
terror??? would retrieve terrorist, terrorism but not terrorists
Search history
To re-run a search, select Search History. Each time you enter a term, the search term is stored. Search History is automatically cleared when you exit the session.
Display
Brief display
By default results will be sorted in reverse chronological order by issue date; you may also choose to resort results by relevancy.
Full display
The default full display is the digital image of the documentwith an option to view the electronic text of the document.
You have the option of viewing previous and next pages of the document. If your search was performed utilising the full-text search option, you may choose pages that were relevant to your search criteria via the Relevant Pages box by selecting a page number from the drop-down list; the list of pages are ordered by relevance.
Since the documents were originally written without "the intention of publication, the memoranda, reports, cables and letters that constitute the collection consist of typed pages, many with stamps, scribbles and smudges". Therefore documents are inconsistent in size and appearance and the text uneven, obscure and even illegible in places. The electronic text is sometimes wrongly transcribed which affects the precision of searching.
Downloading
The digital image of a range of pages of a document can be either:
Printed out as a PDF file
Saved as a PDF file
Saved as *.gif file (right click on image, ‘Save image as’)
The electronic text of a single page of a document can be either:
Printed out
E-mailed
Saved as (using browser’s Save As option)
Appendix 1: List of sources
Agency For International Development
Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
Atlantic-Pacific Interoceanic Canal Study Commission
Atomic Energy Commission
Bureau of the Budget
Central Intelligence Agency
Civil Aeronautics Board
Commission on Foreign Economic Policy
Congress
Council of Economic Advisers
Council on Foreign Economic Policy
Department of Agriculture
Department of Commerce
Department of Defense
Department of Energy
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare
Department of Justice
Department of Labor
Department of State
Department of the Interior
Department of the Treasury
Department of Transportation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Civil Defense Administration
Federal Reserve System
Federal Trade Commission
Foreign Operations Administration
General Accounting Office
Interagency Committee on Agricultural Surplus
Interdepartmental Consultative Group
International Development Advisory Board
Miscellaneous Agencies, Boards, Commissions and Co
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
National Aeronautics and Space Council
National Science Foundation
National Security Council
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization
Office of Defense Mobilization
Office of Management and Budget
Office of Science and Technology
Office of Strategic Services
Office of the Special Assistant For Science and Technology
Office of the Special Representative For Trade Negotiations
Operations Coordinating Board
President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence
President's Commission on Information Activities Abroad
President's Committee To Study the United States Military
President's Science Advisory Committee
Psychological Strategy Board
Senate
Special Committee on Us Trade Relations With East
Strategic Services Unit
Supreme Court
United Nations
United States Civil Service Commission
United States Information Agency
United States Intelligence Board
Warren Commission
White House
Appendix 2: List of Classifications
“The list included here of classifications that were applied to government documents is descriptive rather than prescriptive. Because of the absence of a centralized system of designation, few, if any, of these terms have formal definitions.”
Background Use Only
Confidential
Controlled Dissemination
Eyes Only
For The President Only
Foreign Dissemination
Highly Confidential
Limited Distribution
Limited Official Use
Limited Use
Literally Eyes Only
No Dissemination Abroad
No Foreign Dissemination
No Further Dissemination
Official Use
Official Use Only
Omitted
Personal
Restricted
Secret
Special Handling Required
Top Secret
Unclassified
1
History Faculty Library, Oxford – April 2006
[1] See Appendix 1 for complete list
[2] See Appendix 2 for complete list
[3]"transf. and fig., esp. (U.S. slang) to render more acceptable, clean up, as by the removal of undesirable, improper, or confidential material" (Oxford English Dictionary online, 1 March 2002)