If you haven't seen the statement from ERIC about why the ED's have disappeared
online see below. Wonder how many libraries dumped portions of their fiche
collection to rely on the online? Nicholson Baker haunts my dreams.
Peace,
John for colldv-l
=========================
Dear ERIC Community,
In early August we discovered that sensitive personally identifiable information
appeared in some full text documents contained in the ERIC collection.
Specifically, social security numbers and other highly sensitive information
were found in multiple documents and in a way that could not easily be isolated.
For that reason, we had to temporarily disable access to many full text documents.
Although these documents had been publicly available in microfiche for many
years, the advent of Internet search engines has made it easier to find this
information. Our number one concern is to ensure that any full-text documents we
provide do not violate any individual's privacy. We believe that if any of us
were to have our privacy compromised by an ERIC document, we would want the same
consideration.
We are seeking to restore access to documents as soon as possible. In order to
restore access to ERIC, we have to check every document to see if it contains
personally identifiable information. Due to the quality of many of the
documents, a large portion of the search has to be done by hand. This is a large
undertaking and we are in the process of hiring a team to help restore access in
a fast and responsive manner. We hope to get this team in place by late
September and releasing large numbers of ERIC documents by the end of October.
We will continue to release documents after that point on a rolling basis.
To minimize the burden on our users, we will prioritize searching the documents
that users request. If you would like to request a PDF to be returned online,
please email ERICRequests_at_ed.gov with the record number (such as ED263102).
Documents will be returned on a rolling basis and may take several weeks, but we
are working as fast as possible.
We are sorry for the inconvenience and want to thank you for bearing with us
through this unexpected delay.
The ERIC Team
=====================
-
John P. Abbott, MS MSLS
Associate Professor &
Coordinator, Collection Management
University Library
Appalachian State University
218 College Street
Boone, NC 28608
828-262-2773 (fax)
828-262-2821( vox)
abbottjp_at_appstate.edu
Received on Thu Sep 06 2012 - 03:06:16 EDT