Skip to Main Content U.S. Department of Energy
Declassified Document Tracking System

About the Database

The Origins of DDTS

The Declassified Document Tracking System (DDTS) was created to identify classified and declassified documents for the Hanford Declassification Program (HDP). It was first used at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in 1992. In 1995, implementation was extended to all major contractors at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) site at Hanford that were involved in the site's large-scale declassification program. Since the completion of the HDP in 2003, only minor additions and changes have been made to the information in the database.

Database Contents

DDTS contains records for the classified and declassified documents related to historical operations at the Hanford Site. There are approximately 97,000 records including documents identified by Westinghouse Hanford Company (WHC), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and DOE in 1995 as part of a classified historical document inventory. A large collection of historical photographs and negatives was reviewed for public release in 2000, and data on these materials were also included in DDTS.

Searching and reviewing results

General Information

  • Capital or lower case letters may be used; the database is case insensitive.
  • Some fields use comparison operators. To change the operator, use the arrow at the right of the field to display the options and then select the desired term.
  • The following operators are used, although not all terms appear in every field:
    • Equals
    • Greater Than or Equals
    • Less Than or Equals
    • Starts With
    • Ends With
    • Contains
    • Between
  • The following fields have controlled vocabulary:
    • Document Status
    • Current Custodian
    • Document Custodian

Document ID

The Document ID field contains report numbers, which may have been assigned to documents by their originating organizations, the receiving organizations or, in some cases, by DDTS itself. Since some items have more than one number associated with them, this field will search for matches in both the Document ID field and the Alternate Document ID field.

The quickest DDTS search is by Document ID using the comparison operator Starts With

  • Do not use preceding zeros, i.e., HW-7000, (not HW-07000).
  • HW-3- and HW-7- numbers are entered with two hyphens: (i.e., HW-3-1234, not HW 3-1234).
  • It is generally best to omit suffixes so all variations of a document number will be retrieved.
    • Example: a search for "Document ID Starts With" HW-17381 will retrieve:
      • HW-17381-DEL
      • HW-17381-DEL Rev.1
      • HW-17381-NOTES
      • HW-17381-DEL Rev.2
    • Standard abbreviations have generally been used for suffixes, although there are exceptions. Sometimes, but not always, report numbers have been entered with both the abbreviation and the full term. To ensure comprehensive results, search both ways.
      ADD
      addendum
      BK
      book
      CH
      chapter
      DEL
      declassified with deletions
      PT
      part
      RD
      rough draft
      REV
      revision
      SEC
      section
      SUP
      supplement
      VOL
      volume

Title

  • Unless you're positive you have the exact title, use the comparison operator Contains when searching in this field. Best results are obtained by using just a portion of the title.
  • Truncating individual words is a useful technique. DDTS does autmatic stemming so no wild card symbol such as an asterisk is needed.
    Example: searching for "remediat" will retrieve all titles containing "remediation", "remediate", or "remediating".
    Note: Because DDTS searches for exact words or phrases, automatic stemming is only applied to the last word in a phrase.
  • Although full Boolean searching (using the operators and, or, not to make searching more precise) is not available in DDTS, it is possible to do a crude "and" search in the title field. Enter terms in the order in which you think they appear in the document and append the "%" symbol to the first term. The system will look for both terms in the title field but they must appear in the order in which they are entered.
    • "Hanford% water" does not return the same results as "water% Hanford" although both sets of results will contain "water" and "Hanford."
    • Additional terms may also be searched provided that every term but the last one has "%" added on. "water% contour% Hanford" will retrieve titles with all three words (or their variants) in the specified order.
  • If a title contains an acronym or abbreviation, search with the acronym or abbreviation spelled out, as well as by using the acronym or abbreviation itself. Ensuring comprehensive results requires that you perform two separate searches.
    Example: search both "FFTF" and "Fast Flux Test Facility."

Author Last Name

  • Search for authors' last names without any initials
  • Only one name can be searched at a time, even if a report had several authors.
  • Search for author names both with and without punctuation and spaces. Names have not always been entered into DDTS in a consistend fashion.
    • Example: Do separate searches for:
    • o'Donnell and Odonnell
    • Van Tuyl and VanTuyl

Keyword

  • Unlike some systems, a keyword search in DDTS only looks for terms that have been added to that specific field. Since not all records include keywords, it is best to supplement this search with a title search.
  • Enter only one keyword (or keyword phrase) at a time. There is no list of the terms that were used in creating the keywords but here are some examples of the kind of information that was often used to create keywords
    • Building and facility names were often, but not always, included
    • Processes like Purex or redox
    • Materials such as beryllium or graphite
    • General subject areas like metallurgy or analytical chemistry

Document Date

  • Dates are displayed in the database using numerals and text, e.g. 07-Sep-43. However searches should be done using the format mm/dd/yyyy, e.g. 09/07/1943
  • Entries for documents that showed their year of publication were standardized to the format 01/01/yyyy. E.g. 1954 is entered as 01/01/1954. (Displayed as 01-Jan-1954 in the record)
  • Documents dated with only the month and year were standardized using the first day of the month, e.g. March 1952 was entered as 03/01/1952 (Displayed as 01-Mar-1952 in the record)
  • Always enter a single date in the Start field. Only use End: with the "Between" operator when you are looking for materials published within a range of time.

Document Location

  • Use this text field to search for Records Holding Area (RHA) box numbers.

Document Status

  • This field provides information about the current availability of materials. The default search is a blank field and will return all documents regardless of availability. The drop-down list allows you to specify if you want a particular category of materials, such as those that are publicly available or classified.
  • In reviewing results, use the "document destroyed" field cautiously. Generally it indicates that there were no copies available onsite when the record was created however, there may be copies at unknown offsite locations. In particular, research reports could have been sent to the Department of Energy’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), which may still have copies. No attempt has been made to verify the completeness of the "document destroyed" designation.

Current Classification

  • This field provides information about the actual classification, if any, currently assigned to materials.

Document Custodian

  • Several of the names shown as custodians in DDTS are those of organizations operating at the time the database was developed, not the current contractor custodian.
    • Westinghouse Hanford Company-held materials are now available through LMIT, a subcontractor of Mission Support Alliance (MSA) which has official custody of the materials.
    • Custody of many PNNL-held materials has officially been turned over to DOE-RL.
    • "Dosimetry (Matt Lyon)" is an obsolete reference and current location of the materials will have to be determined.
  • The accuracy of records listing "(RR) DOE/RL Reading Room" as a custodian has not been verified. To determine if the reading room has a copy of an item, use their catalog (http://reading-room.labworks.org/catalog).
  • Similarly, some records show Pacific Northwest National Laboratory as the custodian, with a location "HTL" indicating that the library has a copy. These items are usually microfiche reports that may be at the library but will not show up in the library catalog, Leona. Contact library staff 509-372-7430 for assistance.
  • Information about OSTI and the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) is not comprehensive. While some entries will show that OSTI or NTIS has an item, many other reports without any such indication are also available there. DDTS is not a place to search for information about those collections in general. For assistance in searching the complete NTIS or OSTI holdings, contact the Hanford Technical Library Information Desk (509) 372-7434.

Viewing & Printing Search Results

  • The maximum number of items retrieved per search is 1000. In order to view all possibilities, you may need to narrow your search criteria and retrieve the information through several smaller searches (e.g., breaking the search into smaller time periods).
  • Search results are displayed in ascending document number order.
  • The Search Results screen gives abbreviated information (Document Number, Document Date, Status and full Title).
  • To see the full record for an item, click on the report number.
  • To narrow a list to fewer items, click on "Select" in the far left column for desired items (multiple records can be chosen at one time) and then click on "Retrieve Selected Records." This will give the same abbreviated information as on the earlier screen, but only for the records you chose.
  • You can print search results by clicking on your browser’s print button or using the print option under the File Menu.
  • Information on the Search Results pages, listing abbreviated information, can also be copied and pasted into Excel.

Non-searchable Fields

  • In addition to the searchable fields described above, DDTS records may include the following data elements. Most are self-explanatory and comments are only included when necessary.
    • No. pages
    • Original Classification
    • Last Review Date
    • Abstract
    • Notes
    • Document Categories
    • Primary and secondary subject headings that are used in DOE’s OpenNet database, a collection of citations and full text declassified historical documents from throughout the DOE complex, including Hanford. DDTS information has been supplied to OpenNet.
    • Document Format – included in the Custodians table this field indicates whether documents are microfilm or hard copy (i.e., paper). Information about negatives and photographs is also found here.
    • Review History - This field contains information about when a document was reviewed, any changes that might have been made to its classification and the basis for those changes. It is not necessarily comprehensive or complete, i.e., there may have been additional reviews that are not documented here.

Accessing full text of the documents

  • Many of the documents listed in DDTS as "publicly available" have been scanned and made available through the Hanford Declassified Document Retrieval System (DDRS) at http://www2.hanford.gov/declass/.
  • Copies of materials not available through DDRS may be available through the Hanford Technical Library or the Department of Energy Public Reading Room
  • For copies of materials not available through the resources listed above, users should contact their Records Management organization, which will make arrangements to retrieve items from storage. They will probably appreciate receiving the RHA box number (see "document location" above) along with the report citation.