Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges confronting organizations in responding to the recent electronic discovery (e‐discovery) amendments to the US federal rules of civil procedure. Failure to comply with these rules, even unintentionally, can have significant adverse legal consequences for parties of the lawsuit. The vast majority of information and data is electronic and stored in numerous files and on a variety of media. Thus, there is a critical need to better manage electronic content and implement a strategic approach to accommodate new rules, legislation, and ever‐changing technology. In response, the authors provide recommendations for enterprise‐wide e‐discovery readiness.

To investigate the legal theory for e‐discovery, the authors examine precedent‐setting legal cases for the purpose of providing managerial recommendations for developing and implementing a comprehensive policy for compliance and litigation purposes.

According to the authors' evaluation of the amendments and applicable case law, the new rules make clear that electronic information and data are discoverable, and that failure to protect and store in a retrievable format may lead to adverse legal consequences.

To better prepare for the duties imposed by the e‐discovery amendments, the authors recommend the formation of an enterprise‐wide multi‐functional electronically stored information Discovery Team to develop, implement, and periodically review a comprehensive electronic records management policy and procedures for compliance and litigation purposes.

The authors take into consideration the dearth of information systems literature addressing the critical need to better manage electronic content and to implement an enterprise‐wide strategic approach to accommodate the requirements of e‐discovery, or face costly consequences.

The paper aims to discuss the growing importance of electronic discovery in commercial litigation; the impact of the e‐discovery amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), and the steps corporations should take to address the new rules.

The paper reviews the impact of corporate reliance on electronic information on litigation; regulations that require corporations to protect data; significant cases that established ground rules for discovery of electronic information, including McPeek v. Aschcroft and Zubulake v. Warburg; the requirements of the e‐discovery rules that have been included for the first time in the FRCP; and outlines the steps that corporations should take to mitigate corporate e‐discovery risks.

The paper concludes that electronic discovery challenges will continue to grow for corporations as e‐discovery becomes increasingly important in commercial litigation; that companies can mitigate their e‐discovery risks by proactively working to meet the new requirements; that forward‐looking companies can gain important “safe harbor” protection by instituting a reliable litigation hold strategy; and that companies can use the new federal rules as an opportunity to better manage and forecast their legal costs.

The paper provides a general review of significant e‐discovery rulings; an explanation of the impact of the amended FRCP on corporations; and practical steps that companies can take to mitigate e‐discovery risks.

This paper aims to examine the situation of organizational information governance (IG) and its relationship with e-discovery in China.

This study collects laws, court opinions, cases and relevant literature as data and analyzes their content under the guidance of the framework of Information Governance Reference Model of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM).

Inspired by discussions on the challenges of e-discovery and, in particular, the relationships between organizational IG and e-discovery in English literature, the present study attempts an examination of the relevant situations in China. It is the belief of the study that the connection between IG and the legal risk as framed in the EDRM is a necessary one for China as the country is opening its door wider and continues to seek multilateral cooperation. The study found out, through observations and analyses, the following distinctions of e-discovery and its relationship with IG in China. Despite the very similar US and Chinese digital technological environments and the similar acceptance of electronic evidence into litigations, the situations with e-discovery/electronically stored information (ESI) and IG are different within a Chinese context. Legal provisions regarding electronic evidence are brief and vague, litigating procedures rely on the explanations of the Supreme Court and the Supreme Procuratorate and, most relevantly, there is only a small portion of litigations that features a large quantity of ESI in the context of dramatically increased cases involving electronic evidence. The evidentiary qualifications of ESI, e.g. authenticity and reliability, are discussed intensively in academic writings, which, however, was done in a rather isolated manner, without referring to the relationships between and among them. The concept of proportionality, which was one of the key constructions in e-discovery discussions in English literature, was not found in these writings. As a result, organizational IG in China is not discussed in relation to e-discovery or electronic evidence, raising the question as to how e-discovery of a large quantity of ESI will be handled, should such cases emerge.

Extracted mainly from available literature in legal and information fields, this study is necessarily neither exhaustive nor definitive. However, it can be used to further strengthen other empirical data studies. It could be extended within a Chinese context with interviews with legal and IG professionals. In this regard, the reasons that lead to the distinctions as exhibited in the findings could be explored in future investigations. This study does serve as a marker of the position in China compared to the USA. This research suggests that there is an opportunity for comparable studies at a national level, thus generating complementary knowledge for the IG and e-discovery community internationally.

The findings of the study may be instructive to countries with similar situations, that is, a weak linkage between IG and e-discovery. It may serve as a call for more comparable studies, thus generating complementary knowledge for the IG and e-discovery community internationally.

The study reported in this paper is the first of its kind in terms of exploring the relationships between IG and e-discovery in the Chinese context.

With the rise of alternate discovery services, such as Google Scholar, in conjunction with the increase in open access content, researchers have the option to bypass academic libraries when they search for and retrieve scholarly information. This state of affairs implies that academic libraries exist in competition with these alternate services and with the patrons who use them, and as a result, may be disintermediated from the scholarly information seeking and retrieval process. Drawing from decision and game theory, bounded rationality, information seeking theory, citation theory, and social computing theory, this study investigates how academic librarians are responding as competitors to changing scholarly information seeking and collecting practices. Bibliographic data was collected in 2010 from a systematic random sample of references on CiteULike.org and analyzed with three years of bibliometric data collected from Google Scholar. Findings suggest that although scholars may choose to bypass libraries when they seek scholarly information, academic libraries continue to provide a majority of scholarly documentation needs through open access and institutional repositories. Overall, the results indicate that academic librarians are playing the scholarly communication game competitively.

The purpose of this research project is to identify the legal and security issues, risks and barriers to the uptake of communication and document management technologies by the construction industry. Previous research suggests that the construction industry, especially in Australia, has been reluctant to adopt technology on a broad scale due to a range of legal uncertainties. The purpose of this paper is to explain the relevant legal issues and risks and to suggest possible solutions for legally compliant electronic project administration in the construction industry.

This paper is based on research undertaken for the Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Construction Innovation (CRCCI) Research Project 2005‐025‐A, “Electronic Contract Administration – Legal and Security Issues”. The outcomes from the research to date include a literature review and several case studies. The research project will ultimately produce a set of recommendations for secure and legally compliant electronic project administration.

It is apparent that, if the uncertainties associated with electronic project administration remain unresolved, then the practical consequences for parties using electronic project administration tools may be serious. On a more general level, these uncertainties will contribute to a reduced willingness by the construction industry to take advantage of modern communication technologies.

This research contributes to the need for greater clarity and knowledge of the legal issues and risks of electronic project administration in the construction industry.

The aim of this article is to describes Sprague Library’s experience in using EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) to market library services and resources in order to draw conclusions for other institutions.

Uses the case study of Montclair State University in developing a strategy for using Discovery Tools as a library promotional tool. Also includes examples from other institutions.

EDS (and other Discovery Services) can be helpful in highlighting library resources and services that may go unnoticed. Studies show a correlation between discovery tools and increased Interlibrary Loan (ILL) activity so it’s important to promote services like ILL within your discovery service.

With a reasonable effort, libraries can use discovery tools to provide additional modes of communication with users.

Highlights some of Sprague Library’s unique efforts in utilizing EDS to promote library resources and services.

This paper aims to explore a new model of “record” that maps traditional attributes of a record onto a technical decomposition of digital records. It compares the core characteristics necessary to call a digital object a “record” in terms of diplomatics or “evidence” in terms of digital forensics. It then isolates three layers of abstraction: the conceptual, the logical and the physical. By identifying the essential elements of a record at each layer of abstraction, a diplomatics of digital records can be proposed.

Digital diplomatics, a research outcome of the International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems (InterPARES) project, gives archivists a methodology for analyzing the identity and integrity of digital records in electronic systems and thereby assessing their authenticity (Duranti and Preston, 2008; Duranti, 2005) and tracing their provenance.

Digital records consist of user-generated data (content), system-generated metadata identifying source and location, application-generated metadata managing the look and performance of the record (e.g., native file format), application-generated metadata describing the data (e.g., file system metadata OS), and user-generated metadata describing the data. Digital diplomatics, based on a foundation of traditional diplomatic principles, can help identify digital records through their metadata and determine what metadata needs to be captured, managed and preserved.

The value and originality of this paper is in the application of diplomatic principles to a deconstructed, technical view of digital records through functional metadata for assessing the identity and authenticity of digital records.

Advanced analytics‐driven data analyses allow enterprises to have a complete or “360 degrees” view of their operations and customers. The insight that they gain from such analyses is then used to direct, optimize, and automate their decision making to successfully achieve their organizational goals. Data, text, and web mining technologies are some of the key contributors to making advanced analytics possible. This paper aims to investigate these three mining technologies in terms of how they are used and the issues that are related to their effective implementation and management within the broader context of predictive or advanced analytics.

A range of recently published research literature on business intelligence (BI); predictive analytics; and data, text and web mining is reviewed to explore their current state, issues and challenges learned from their practice.

The findings are reported in two parts. The first part discusses a framework for BI using the data, text, and web mining technologies for advanced analytics; and the second part identifies and discusses the opportunities and challenges the business managers dealing with these technologies face for gaining competitive advantages for their businesses.

The study findings are intended to assist business managers to effectively understand the issues and emerging technologies behind advanced analytics implementation.