FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF CIA LIBRARY AS A RESEARCH TOOL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01731R003400090004-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 4, 2003
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: October 11, 1951
• Content Type: MEMO

C MFIDENTINL
Approved For Release 2003/03/07 : CIA-RDP80R01731 R003400090004-6
ll Oct 71
TO: Assistant Director, Intelligence coordination
IROM: Assistant Director, Research and iieports
SUBJECT: Further development of CIA Library as a researc i tool
My concern with priorities to insure adequate staffing for the
Library and Registers arises out of the following considerations:
1. The main emphasis in ORRts intelligence effort ILas shifted from
extracting significant items from a flow of current materials passing
across the analyst's desk to positive research involving the assembly
by the analyst of all evidence, new or old, available to CIA on a given
research topic. This positive research is important bctL tc basic
studies and to the evaluation of current developments.
2. Since most documentary material is relevant tc research projects
of concern to many different analysts the only way of insuring the
availability of all evidence to all analysts is to have such evidence
centrally filed and fully indexed to allow rapid. search and recovery
of relevant items.
3, -ach analyst is ultimately responsible for being aide to produce
the available evidence on problems in his field. If he cannot be sure
of getting all the items (including the most recent) with great promptness
from the Library on demand he will understandably hoard such items in
his own files. The Library has not in the past been staffed to provide
the requisite service with the required degree of reliability.
analysts have thus developed a distrust of the Library as a reference
tool, and can only with difficulty be induced to disgorge their material
to it.
4. Even a very few failures, or a very small bacK-.o5 cf unprocessed
material can thus set us back months in the education c:' analysts to the
use of the Library as the central depository of information. Thus in
this instance the small difference between an almost adequate library
job and a wholly adequate one is the difference between success and
failure in our research effort.
5. It is our view, therefore, that to make ex_istin:; investment in
the Library and Registers pay off, a very high priority shculd be given
by the Agency to full staffing of C,CD. hat may appear to be small
economies here can endanger the whole effort.
Approved For Release 2003/03hh/~~07 :~~Ctt P qPP,01 R003400090004-6