- Plans Finalized to Dispose of 2000 Census Paperwork In the December 18, 1999 edition of this newsletter, I wrote about U.S. National Archives and records Administration's plan to dispose of non-essential paperwork created while creating the 2000 census. In that article, I wrote: The National Archives and Records Administration has received the records disposition schedules for the records that have been and will be created as a result of the Census 2000. They are contacting many constituent groups, seeking public input. The National Archives also published a notice about the same topic in the Federal Register on Dec. 13, 1999. In short, the Year 2000 census will generate a lot of paperwork. Genealogists will be quite aware of the records produced that list names, addresses and vital demographic material. However, many hundreds of thousands of other documents will be produced, including address lists and map update records, block canvassing, special place and group quarters inventories, local updates to census address lists, new construction lists, updates or revisions to census maps in electronic format, update/leave questionnaires, urban update/leave questionnaires, list enumeration and address registers, updates and revisions to the Master Address File, questionnaires, maps, and address registers created for special enumerations, respondent data collected by telephone assistance and through the Internet response program, operations and control records, electronic images of scanned paper questionnaires, unprocessed electronic source files of information captured from the electronic images, the Decennial Response File, the Census Unedited File, the Census Unedited File Sample, the Census Edited File, the Census Edited File Sample, the Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation (ACE) address lists, ACE telephone interview records, personal interview records and maps, dual system estimates, ACE support and management records, Census 2000 contracts and related records, census pretest records, research, evaluation, and experimental program records, and records created using electronic mail and word processing applications. (Whew!) The U.S. Census Bureau, not the National Archives, conducts the census. However, the National Archives will be storing the records for use by future generations. Their big question is, "Which records are worth keeping?" Storing everything will require more storage warehouses to be built at taxpayer expense. Keeping every scrap of paper is simply not practical. Someone has to make a decision as to what to keep and what to throw away. The National Archives is inviting public comments in order to help in that decision process. Genealogy societies are especially invited to comment. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has now completed the appraisal report and the revisions to Disposition Job No. N1-29-00-02, a comprehensive record schedule that proposes dispositions for 62 series and subseries of Census 2000 records, including the scanned image files of the paper questionnaires and forms. The proposed final report is available online at: http://www.nara.gov/records/schedules/census2.html