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BLACKSBURG -- Virginia Tech will release Wednesday an electronic archive to families of April 16 victims, meeting a six-month deadline agreed to as part of an $11 million wrongful death settlement.

But several family members are not expecting this latest release of information to contain any great revelations.

Not because there isn't more to know about the event that changed their lives, but because they don't trust the university's administration.

Some 20 months after Seung-Hui Cho fatally shot 32 students and faculty and himself, there remains a disconnect between some families who believe Tech has been too concerned with its image and liability and university officials who say they want to embrace the families and wounded as lifelong members of the Hokie community.

"We feel to this day like illegitimate children that nobody wants to talk about," said Mike Pohle, whose son was killed in the shootings. "This is old news to people. And I feel like that is the strategy -- to make it old news."

The archive, which will include scanned paper documents related to Cho and the shootings as well as e-mails sent to and from Tech employees, is part of a settlement the state reached with families in June that also included meetings with law enforcement, university officials and Gov. Tim Kaine.

Six months after signing the settlement, Pohle said he thinks much of the university's concern ended when families gave up their right to sue as part of the agreement.

"Quite honestly, we should have never settled," he said.

University spokesman Larry Hincker would not detail exactly how the information would be released to families or about its public availability, other than to say Tech would comply with the settlement. Earlier this year, Hincker indicated that the archive would be made available to the public.

The anger of some family members has roots in several events that have transpired amid the multiple reports, meetings, commemorations and documents released that have built a narrative of that day.

Inaccuracies in a state panel report on the shootings, misplacement of documents and hazy recollections of officials are proof of an effort to portray Tech in a favorable light and sidestep accountability, some say. Some families also refer to a general lack of remorse and concern for their needs that they say starts with Tech President Charles Steger and filters down.

The emotions came to a head during meetings between families and Tech officials in October and have led for some families to call for Steger's resignation.

"The commentary, let's just say, was pretty severe," Steger said last week of the meetings. "But you've got to understand that and you've got to be compassionate."

Steger said he tried to express the sorrow the university community feels at each of the meetings.

But beyond saying that he is sorry for what happened, Steger should express some regret for his actions that day, said Andy Goddard, whose son was wounded on April 16, 2007.

"That, to me, was the final straw," he said. "By saying you wouldn't do something different next time, you've got to be thinking about political correctness and lawyers. I think as a human being he could've said, obviously, he looks back and thinks and wishes he would've done something different. ... You're talking to people who have gravestones instead of children. It's a little different for me because I still have my son."

Steger said there are things the university could have done better regarding the aftermath of the shootings -- the ad hoc initiative to assign family liaisons didn't work well for many, for instance. But he has held fast to his initial pronouncement that, on the day of the shootings, university leaders made the right decisions based on what they knew at the time.

Questions about the university's actions arise again, however, every time new information comes out.

Families recently took issue with a 46-minute discrepancy between the state panel report and documents about a witness interview the morning of the shootings.

The question of exactly who knew what and when is important when looking at decisions made that morning and the university's excuses, Pohle said -- particularly the timing of the first warning the university sent out, more than two hours after the initial shooting.

"There's a level of detail that will make some people look bad," Pohle said.

Compiling every detail about the day has become something like a full-time job for many families.

Suzanne Grimes, whose son was injured in the shootings, has cardboard boxes filled with documents related to the shootings in her Pennsylvania home. When new details of that day come to light or a previous statement is proven incorrect, it's upsetting, she said.

There seems to be a fundamental lack of recognition by university officials that the shootings affect the families, she said, even those who didn't lose their children.

All but two of the 59 families of people wounded or killed in the shootings signed the settlement. No lawsuits have been brought against the university, but the possibility of lawsuits from the two families will remain until April 16.

Steger said the threat of litigation complicates how he interacts with all the families as the university's chief executive.

"When there is litigation pending or under way, my lawyers ... I am not at liberty to communicate with them [the families]," he said. "It's not that I don't want to. ... People lose sight of the fact that lots of people can pick up the phone from here, but not me. That's very frustrating."

Steger added that his responsibility to run the university and the fact that he is not a trained counselor make him ill-suited to working with families as they grieve.

That's the role of Tech's Office of Recovery and Support, which Steger formed in July 2007. It has a budget of about $500,000 and its staff includes three therapists. Steger sent an e-mail to families last week asking for suggestions about how the Office of Recovery and Support could better work with them.

Debbie Day, director of the office since July 1, said it's frustrating when the words of some publicly vocal people are presented as representing the feelings of all the families.

"There are quite a few people I feel we have helped who are very grateful and are in a very different place than they were a year ago," she said. "There are others that are still very angry and don't have the answers that they want, and I don't know how long they'll be there."

Neither Day nor Goddard could estimate roughly what percentage of families were dissatisfied with the university. Goddard described himself as in the middle of the spectrum.

He's unhappy with university leadership but said he still wears Virginia Tech T-shirts with pride and doesn't have a "lynch mob mentality" toward university officials.

As for Steger's future, Goddard stopped short of saying he should resign, but said Tech's board of visitors should look closely at whether he is the right person to lead.

Pohle said at least 80 percent of the families are unhappy with Tech. He said Day's office absorbs some of that anger because they're just essentially messengers for an unresponsive administration.

"It's like you go to a restaurant and the food is bad, you end up taking it out on the waitress," he said.

By reaching out to the families, Steger could mitigate the feeling some have that he views them as "a pain," Pohle said.

"There is this mistrust and dislike that has been built up, and I think if you want to start to build that bridge, you've got to recognize that," he said.

Steger said he has to try to help the entire university community heal. That community includes the families, but Steger said he doesn't know how to approach people who feel negatively toward him but want interaction.

"I'll do everything in the world I can to be helpful. I care about these families," he said. "They certainly can judge how they see fit. ... But I have to be the leader of this enterprise, for better or worse."