National Personnel Records Center:
Request Processing Procedural Documents & Guide

>>> The National Personnel Records Center - a division of the US National Archives and Records Administration - describes itself as "a central repository of personnel-related records, both military and civil service." It holds the records of all veterans who have served since 1917, medical records of all retirees from the military, medical records of military family members treated at military facilities, and the personnel files of separated federal employees (as far back as the mid-1800s). Every single day, the NPRC receives around 4,000 requests for military records.

Through a Freedom of Information Act request, Jim Klotz of CUFON obtained much of the NPRC's internal rules and guides for processing records requests. He posted them here, and with his permission, The Memory Hole is mirroring them below.

 

NATIONAL PERSONNEL RECORDS CENTER (NPRC)
REQUEST PROCESSING PROCEDURAL DOCUMENTS AND GUIDE

In response to a FOIA request (dated July 25, 2006) submitted to NARA's National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis MO, NARA supplied a CD-ROM containing two groups of items: 1. "...images from NPRC's formal operating instructions for processing the various kinds of requests..." and 2. "...images from the NPRC Case Reference Guide (CRG), which consists of summaries of the formal instructions."

Release letter:  (Click here for PDF of release letter)

15-Aug-2006 Telephone discussion today with FOIA Specialist Matthew Olsen at NARA College Park facility revealed the material supplied and made available here was originally prepared for another requester "last year."  Also note two items are missing from the formal procedural documents and have been requested.  they will be added if and when they are made available.  The missing items are two Figures lined from NPRC 1865.107 - Miscellaneous correspondence procedures unique to Records Reconstruction Branch:
 
CHAPTER 1: GENERAL PROCEDURES
Figure 1-13.4 Primary Circulars cited and the reason for separation
Figure 1-13.5 Dept. of the Air Force separation program numbers (SPN) and separation programs designators (SPD)

The material supplied consists of nearly 1000 individual files, mostly HTML and image files, totaling about 100 Megabytes.  A HTML menu for the CRG was provided, but a menus had to be created for the formal operating instructions to allow convenient access.  The material should be accessible by just about any browser such as Internet Explorer or Netscape, etc.

Top level menu for NPRC Case Reference Guide (CRG)

Top level edited, sorted menu for NPRC formal procedural documents

Top Level complete, unsorted menu for NPRC formal procedural documents

 


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posted 08 Sept 2006
site and intro copyright 2002-6 Russ Kick
other text copyright 2006 Jim Klotz