Document Organization Systems
With the exclusion of documents containing information regarding anomalous entities, all documents and records held by the Agency are organized with the Superintendent of Documents (SuDocs) management system. However, when a document contains information regarding an anomalous entity or phenomenon, it becomes subject to the Anomalous Documents (AnomDocs) management system. This separation of documents serves two purposes: the first purpose is, due to laws surrounding the AnomDocs system, they are protected from various requests, such as those made by the United Nations or those made by the general public via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request; the second, and much more significant, purpose of this distinction is that the necessity for several different documents to be appended to a singular anomalous entity necessitates the replacement of a series number with an anomalous index number.
Below you can find a comprehensive guide on determining the AnomDocs designation of any particular document.
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The first step in organizing your document into the AnomDocs system is to determine which directorate that document belongs to. This directorate's name is abbreviated (removing the "D" from directorate) and is appended to "FA/", standing for FASA Archive. If done correctly, the beginning of any document organized using AnomDocs should start with "FA/XX", where "XX" is the abbreviated name of any Directorate. For example, a document belonging to the Directorate of Anomalous Science & Technology would start with "FA/AST."
The next step is to determine which specific subdivision of the directorate the document belongs to; all important subdivisions within the Agency are listed on our organization page. The letter associated with that division is then appended to the end of the designation. For example, a document belonging to the Anomalous Documentation & Review Division of the Directorate of Anomalous Science & Technology would start with "FA/AST.C."
After you've determined the directorate and subdivision, you'll need to add the year in which the document was filed. If a document was filed in the year 1998, you would add "1998" to the end of whatever you have so far; in the case of our example, we'll say that it was filed in the year 2003, giving us the designation "FA/AST.C.2003."
The final step is to add the Anomalous Index Number (AIN) and a unique identifier (if it's necessary) to the document name. The AIN of an anomaly is a unique identifier used for the anomaly. Every anomaly possesses it's own AIN; even if that anomaly may not be referred to by that number at all times, it's AIN is used for the purposes of documentation. Anomalous Index Numbers are assigned by the Anomalous Documentation & Review Division at random between 2 and 1000; they are not sequential or chronological. This is an internal security measure that ensures that the total number of anomalies discovered and researched by the Agency cannot be determined through a surface-level information breach.
For example, the document which details an anomaly following the previous examples with the anomalous index number of "173" would be named "FA/AST.C.2003.173." In the case of documents which compile documents and outline the nature of an anomalous phenomena (as can be found in the 20th Century Archive or the 21st Century Archive), the AIN takes the place of a unique identifier, and the document is officially named.
A unique identifier is only used for documents which expand on baseline documentation of an anomaly. Departing from the previous examples, let's assume that there's a report written in 2005 from the Biological Anomalies Research Division that directly relates to the anomaly designated as AIN#173. The name of this document would be written as "FA/AST.E.2005.173.01." In another example, a document filed in 2003 recording the interference of STARS teams in the acquisition of AIN#173 would be named "FA/SO.D.2003.173.01."
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In the case of non-canon and joke documents, you would place ".NC" or ."J" following the year. For the sake of simplicity, we'll use the above example of AIN#173. The name of the document as it would appear in the archive would be "FA/AST.C.2003.NC.173" or "FA/AST.C.2003.J.173."
Due to the obscure and exclusive nature of this documentation system, many materials are referred to in-short by a colloquial, designated name as opposed to their full name. Many anomalies are referred to by their codenames and many memorandums, transcripts and stories recalling the events of Agency staff are referred to in-short by other names.