Virginia Tech on Wednesday set up a voluminous electronic archive of 7,700 documents related to last year's campus massacre.
The archive, which can be reviewed by families of the victims as well as those injured, eventually will be made public. It is part of a June settlement agreement in which the families and survivors agreed not to sue the state. Most signed the agreement and hoped the events of April 16, 2007 — and the actions of Tech officials — would become clearer through a public archive.
Though many documents already have been released to the public and to families — some under Freedom of Information Act requests — this is the most comprehensive release.
"There's a lot of information in the archive that has not yet been made public," said Larry Hincker, a spokesman for Virginia Tech.
The documents include 13,700 pages of information related to the massacre, in which 32 people were slain. An additional 17 were shot and wounded by Tech student Seung-Hui Cho, who ended the shootings by killing himself.
The documents include numerous e-mails, including those written by Tech President Charles W. Steger and other top Tech officials and by members of the English faculty. Cho, a senior, was an English major.
Hincker said massacre-related information from the computers of about 150 Tech faculty and staff members is included in the archives. Any record relating to Cho, except medical records, will be public, he said.
"There's lots and lots of e-mail correspondence," Hincker said. "There's lots and lots of stuff."
The material includes scanned hard-copy documents as well as electronically stored documents. Hincker said the archive is set up so it can be searched by using keywords.
The cost of setting up the archive — the agreement required it to be in place by yesterday — was $400,000. The money was provided by Virginia Tech. The family members were sent passwords to the archive yesterday.
Hincker said it is important to give the families a chance to review the archive material before it is made available to the public in February. Some of the documents contain personal information unique to each family. Hincker said families will have until Feb. 1 to inspect the documents to make sure no private information, such as financial aid records or academic transcripts, are made public.
Hincker said that sometime in February, the university will make available public-access terminals at the Library of Virginia in Richmond and the Virginia Tech Newman Library in Blacksburg.
Ultimately, the archive will be available on the Internet for inspection by anyone, Hincker said.
Carlos Santos is a staff writer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Staff writers Rex Bowman and David Ress contributed to this report.
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