Category «E-Records»

Law Firm Technology Survey

The Eighth Annual AmLaw Tech Survey, September 2003. Survey results were compiled from responses provided by 137 law firms, and address the following categories: document management, docketing & calendaring, spam defense, litigation support, and electronic evidence vendors. Additional information on expenditures related to hardware, software and IT related personnel is provided in another survey titled …

Subjects: E-Records, Internet

Are E-Books Still Viable, or is Amazon Preparing an Alternative?

BarnesandNoble.com is no longer selling e-books, according to this posting on their website. However, a New York Times article by David D. Kirkpatrick, discusses the mid-September launch by Amazon.com of “a searchable online archive with the texts of tens of thousands of books of nonfiction, according to several publishing executives involved.” This program is called …

Subjects: E-Records

Digital Archiving Program Based on PDF

A committee of the Society of American Archivists, in conjunction with various associations representing imaging services providers, are evaluating new standards for a modified form of PDF, called PDF-A (for Portable Document Format Archive), which they propose as an option for the long-term storage of electronic documents.

Subjects: E-Records, Libraries

Database Vendor Eliminates Personal Data on Mexican Citizens

AP reported that commercial online public records provider ChoicePoint has eliminated its database of “personal information of 65 million voting-age Mexican citizens” following a controvery surrounding the means by which this information was obtained. The company has a contract with the Dept. of Justice, which uses the system for activities associated with homeland security. See …

Subjects: E-Government, E-Records, Privacy

Digital Document Preservation: Remember Microfiche – Well Its Back!

Marketplace response to the challenges of preserving digital documents appears to be incorporating a “back to the future” perspective according to this recent article, Upgrade and Archive: The Ongoing Threat of Data Extinction. The continual push to digitize documents into virtual libraries must be balanced against the critical issues associated with the lifespan of hardware …

Subjects: E-Records, Libraries

Lifespan of CD-RWs Critically Short

cdfreaks.com reports on a study by the Dutch magazine, PC-Active, involving tests on 30 separate brands of recordable CDs to ascertain whether data and audio tracks saved on the disks was still readable after a 20 month period. The very bad news was that despite marketing indicating data is stable for up to ten years, …

Subjects: E-Records

Researcher Details Security Concerns and Hidden Data in Word Documents Online

Scalable Exploitation of, and Responses to Information Leakage Through Hidden Data in Published Documents, by Simon Byers, AT&T’s Research Labs. Mr. Beyer’s research focused on the tools and techniques used to “search for hidden data in Word documents.” The use of hidden text is routine in the process of creating documents using Word, so this …

Subjects: E-Records, Intellectual Property, Internet, Privacy

Dept. of Education Proposed Rule on Student Data Privacy

From the Federal Register, July 28, 2003: Statute: The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act FERPA provides that an agency or institution may not have a policy or practice of disclosing personally identifiable information from education records without the “written consent” of the parent or eligible student, subject to specified exceptions. 20 U.S.C. 1232g(b)(1). Current …

Subjects: E-Government, E-Records, Privacy

Preserving Digital Documents

Storing e-text for centuries describes the LOCKSS (for “lots of copies keep stuff safe”) project for permanent publishing on the Web, which is the brainchild of Stanford University librarian Vicky Reich and researcher David Rosenthal. From the LOCKSS website: “LOCKSS creates low-cost, persistent digital “caches” of authoritative versions of http-delivered content. The LOCKSS software enables …

Subjects: Digital Rights, E-Records, Knowledge Management, Libraries