The 2003 General Assembly of the State of Virginia has passed a bill [HB 2426] intended to regulate remote access to public land and court records through the Internet. Among the interesting details: court and county clerks can refuse to record an instrument containing a social security number; documents containing sensitive information cannot be posted; court clerks will be required to offer free subscription access; the subscription appllication process must include a sworn statement of the identity, home or business address, nationality, and purpose in applying for access.

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This article by Michael Looney in the March Edition Syllabus Magazine highlights the need for digital archive standards in higher education. I've written before about joint efforts underway to develop a common digital archive standard, called PDF-A. Mr. Looney, who is a senior director at Adobe Systems, Inc., explains the effort as follows:

PDF/A proponents (a working group comprised of industry, government, and academic institutions working with AIIM and NPES) are aiming to have PDF/A officially recognized by the International Standards Organization (of ISO 9000 fame) within approximately 18 months. Their efforts are directed at solving a serious and increasingly urgent problem. The lack of a recognized and accepted electronic standard for records preservation?particularly as new generations of hardware and software have made previous digital technology obsolete?has led to the loss of significant amounts of valuable information over the past several decades. Military files from the Vietnam War, records from the Viking Mars Mission, Census Bureau data and land use records have been lost due to the inability to read data formats and the deterioration of magnetic tapes used to store that data.

The list of organizations that mandate or use PDF as a de facto standard is growing to include the U.S. Courts, the National Science Foundation for grant submission, and the Food and Drug Administration for drug submissions. A common PDF/A standard will give librarians and educators the confidence that their records could be readily accessed far into the future.

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