List of histories (National Park Service)

Ms. Best,

In accordance with 43 CFR 2.5(a), a requester must describe the records in
sufficient detail to enable an employee familiar with the subject area of
the request to locate responsive records with a reasonable amount of
effort. Your request does not meet this requirement. Firstly, your
request did not specify a time frame for which you are seeking data.
Secondly, you have not indicated the specific types of reports you are
seeking, e.g. historic structure reports, base maps, furnishing plans,
cultural landscape reports, oral histories, ethnographies, etc.

In your request you indicated that you were seeking a fee waiver. However,
you did not provide sufficient justification to qualify for a fee waiver
under the Department’s FOIA regulations (43 CFR 2.48
<http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=3cf2d9487b3873a721f90f5f7513c333&r=PART&n=43y1.1.1.1.2#se43.1.2_148>).
The statutory requirement for granting a fee waiver is that release of the
information must be in the public interest because it—

(1) Is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the
operations and activities of the Government; and
(2) Is not primarily in your commercial interest.

In accordance with 43 CFR 2.48, you must specifically address the
Department’s fee waiver criteria for each request you submit, regardless of
whether you may have been granted a fee waiver previously. To assist us in
making a decision on your request for a fee waiver, we ask that you address
the following:

(1) How the records concern the operations or activities of the Federal
government.

(2) How disclosure is likely to contribute to public understanding of those
operations or activities, including:

(3) How disclosure is likely to significantly contribute to the
understanding of a reasonably broad audience of persons interested in the
subject, as opposed to your individual understanding, including:

(4) How the public's understanding of the subject in question will be
enhanced to a significant extent by the disclosure.

We will be unable to proceed further with your request until we receive
additional clarification from you. In accordance with our regulations (43
CFR 2.51), if we do not hear from you within 20 workdays of the date of
this letter, we will assume you are no longer interested in this matter and
will close the file on your request

Sincerely,

C.

____________________

Ms. Charis Wilson, PhD, CRM
NPS FOIA Officer
12795 W. Alameda Parkway
PO Box 25287
Denver, CO 80225-0287
303-969-2959
Fax: 303-969-2557
1-855-NPS-FOIA
npsfoia@nps.gov <charis_wilson@nps.gov>

Thank you for your response. However, you still have not provided enough
information to allow us to search for records with a reasonable amount of
effort. For example, you still have not specified a date range for your
search. Nor have you indicated whether you are seeking records held in the
Washington DC offices, e.g. headquarters offices, or if your request also
encompasses records held in more than 400 individual park units.

You also did not address the issue of justification for your fee waiver
request.

Please note, there are already many records relating to the history of the
National Park Service available on our websites. Including the following:

https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/hisnps/index.htm

https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/electronicresources.htm

https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/

https://pubs.etic.nps.gov/
<https://pubs.etic.nps.gov/SearchResults.aspx?searchString=national+park+service+general&searchID=&fieldIdentifier=#&&U8bcMZNs5xfqPCb66PHQIQIGHg85RObw5FCTBHRC5bZ2A5b3e49Dm7Zq/72vyuVGjXnInuy8ZjRq3CwWoiPCDWzQ+u2iMD+c+gQv59hPllgQB+T9w+p+cIoGE3yh4CxH>

As mentioned earlier, in accordance with 43 CFR 2.5 if we do not receive
the requested clarification, we will presume you are no longer interested
in this matter and will close the file on this request.

Sincerely,

C.

____________________

Ms. Charis Wilson, PhD, CRM
NPS FOIA Officer
12795 W. Alameda Parkway
PO Box 25287
Denver, CO 80225-0287
303-969-2959
Fax: 303-969-2557
1-855-NPS-FOIA
npsfoia@nps.gov <charis_wilson@nps.gov>

Ms. Best,

Attached please find our formal acknowledgment of your request and our
response to your fee waiver request.

Sincerely,

C.
____________________

Ms. Charis Wilson, PhD, CRM
NPS FOIA Officer
12795 W. Alameda Parkway
PO Box 25287
Denver, CO 80225-0287
303-969-2959
Fax: 303-969-2557
1-855-NPS-FOIA
npsfoia@nps.gov <charis_wilson@nps.gov>

Ms. Best,

As noted in our fee waiver denial letter, if you wish to appeal our
determination you need to submit your appeal to the DOI FOIA Appeals
Office.

Sincerely,

C.

____________________

Ms. Charis Wilson, PhD, CRM
NPS FOIA Officer
12795 W. Alameda Parkway
PO Box 25287
Denver, CO 80225-0287
303-969-2959
Fax: 303-969-2557
1-855-NPS-FOIA
npsfoia@nps.gov <charis_wilson@nps.gov>

Ms. Best,

I have confirmed with the Chief Historian that their office does not
maintain a list of "historical studies" that have either been produced or
commissioned by the National Park Service (NPS). She advised that the only
"lists" she knew of were the items listed on the NPS history website
<https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/hisnps/index.htm> or those items that had
been cataloged in the Technical Information Center (TIC
<http://pubs.etic.nps.gov>) and Integrated Resource Management Application
(IRMA) Data Store <https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/> collections.

In accordance with Section 4.3(B) of the DOI FOIA Handbook, we are not
required to create records or conduct research in order to respond to a
FOIA request. However, for your convenience I am attaching a list of TIC
documents that have been cataloged under the unit category National Park
Service General (NPSG). Additionally, you can conduct an advanced search
<https://eosfcweb01.eosfc-intl.net/N94044/OPAC/Search/AdvancedSearch.aspx>
of materials cataloged in NPS libraries for items where the author and/or
publisher is National Park Service.

Should you consider this response to be a denial of your request, you have
the right to appeal. You may file an appeal by writing to:

Freedom of Information Act Appeals Officer
Office of the Solicitor
U.S. Department of the Interior
1849 C Street, NW
MS-6556-MIB,
Washington, D.C. 20240
foia.appeals@sol.doi.gov

Your appeal must be received no later than 90 workdays after the date of
this final response. The appeal should be marked, both on the envelope and
the face of the appeal letter, with the legend "FREEDOM OF INFORMATION
APPEAL." Your appeal should be accompanied by a copy of your original
request and copies of all correspondence between yourself and the National
Park Service related to this request, along with any information you have
which leads you to believe the records are available, including where they
might be found, if the location is known to you. Please note, appeals
received after 5 p.m. EST will be considered to have been received as of
the following day.

Also as part of the 2007 OPEN Government Act FOIA amendments, the Office of
Government Information Services (OGIS) was created to offer mediation
services to resolve disputes between FOIA requesters and Federal agencies
as a nonexclusive alternative to litigation. Using OGIS services does not
affect your right to pursue litigation.

You may contact OGIS in any of the following ways:

Office of Government Information Services (OGIS)
National Archives and Records Administration
Room 2510
8601 Adelphi Road
College Park, MD 20740-6001

E-mail: ogis@nara.gov
Phone: 301-837-1996
Fax: 301-837-0348
Toll-free: 1-877-684-6448

Additionally, because the National Park Service creates and maintains law
enforcement records, we are required by the Department of Justice to
provide the following information, even though it may or may not apply to
your specific request. Congress excluded three discrete categories of law
enforcement and national security records from the requirements of the
FOIA. See 5 U.S.C. 552(c) (2006 & Supp. IV 2010). This response is limited
to those records that are subject to the requirements of the FOIA. This is
a standard notification that we are required to give all our requesters and
should not be taken as an indication that excluded records do, or do not,
exist.

Please do not hesitate to contact me, both as the NPS FOIA Liaison and the
person who processed your request, with any further questions or concerns.
I can be reached at the address above or by phone at 303-969-2959. I can
also be reached via e-mail at charis_wilson@nps.gov.

Sincerely,

C.

____________________

Ms. Charis Wilson, PhD, CRM
NPS FOIA Officer
12795 W. Alameda Parkway
PO Box 25287
Denver, CO 80225-0287
303-969-2959
Fax: 303-969-2557
1-855-NPS-FOIA
npsfoia@nps.gov <charis_wilson@nps.gov>

Ms. Best: Thank you for your June 21, 2018, letter to the Department of
the Interior (“Department”) intending to file a Freedom of Information Act
(“FOIA”) appeal (“appeal”) to challenge the National Park Service's ("NPS")
decision to deny your request for a fee waiver. The Department has attached
a copy of your June 21, 2018, letter to this message for your reference. Before
the Department can accept this matter for processing as an appeal, you must
submit copies of all correspondence between you and the NPS regarding the
FOIA request. *See 43 C.F.R. **§ 2.59* (copy attached). Since you did not
provide the Department with copies of all correspondence between you and
the NPS regarding the FOIA request (for example, a copy of correspondence
from the NPS requesting clarification of what you are seeking or its
response to your fee waiver request), the Department cannot accept this
matter for processing as an appeal at this time.

Within 20 workdays from the date of this message, please provide the FOIA
Appeals Office with a copy of all correspondence between you and the NPS
related to the FOIA request, including copies of the NPS' clarification
request and its response to the fee waiver, so that the Department can
accept this matter for processing. If the FOIA Appeals Office does not
receive all of this documentation from you within the 20 workday time
frame, it will not consider your June 21, 2018, letter for processing as an
appeal.

You may e-mail a copy of the above-described documentation (and any other
correspondence with the bureau that you did not previously submit) to this
e-mail address (FOIA.Appeals@sol.doi.gov), fax the materials to (202)
208-6677, or mail them to the following address:

Department of the Interior
FOIA & Privacy Act Appeals Office
1849 C St., N.W. - MS 6556
Washington, D.C. 20240

The Department will not take any further appellate action on this matter if
it does not receive the above materials from you within the 20 workday time
frame.

If you have any questions regarding this message, please call the FOIA
Appeals Office at (202) 208-5339. Thank you.

--
Darrell R. Strayhorn
FOIA & Privacy Act Appeals Officer
Department of the Interior

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