Records/Archives in the News r980915b There are seven stories in this posting Sacramento Business Journal 9/14/98 Consumers, small firms must be Y2K-ready The Age (Australia) 9/16/98 CIA funded covert Tibetan exile campaign BBC Online 9/14/98 The hero with no one to mourn him San Francisco Chronicle 9/11/98 Court allows ballots to remain secret Ebusiness 9/9/98 Links to the Past AP 9/15/98 Back-up Starr documents stored in secure House building Reuters 9/15/98 Civil War Soldier gets book deal _________________________________________________________________ Sacramento Business Journal 9/14/98 Consumers, small firms must be Y2K-ready Kathleen Burke <snip> Already there's a "conventional wisdom" about what consumers should do to prepare for the millennium. You may not want to be in an airplane, people say, or in the hospital at the stroke of midnight Jan. 1, 2000, and you'll want to be sure you'll have plenty of cash. Doomsday theorists say it'll be worse, and a Y2K disaster movie is being prepared for release next summer. The New York Post has already published a lengthy doomsday scenario, and some national journalists have even suggested that consumers would do well to avoid small banks at the century's turn. Banks can't do much about air traffic control or hospitals -- though we'll get to that in a moment -- but most banks, small and large, have built into their planning for the Year 2000 the fact that consumers will be fearful of institutional computer failures everywhere. It's being anticipated and accommodated. The huge task of reprogramming banking systems, rewriting hundreds of millions of lines of code to recognize 2000 as distinct from 1900, is proceeding apace, on schedule. That's just one of the facts noted in a recent study by PaineWebber analysts that assesses the progress toward Y2K readiness of 30 large banks in the United States. The study notes that in general the banks are on track toward compliance. After assessing the banks on the basis of progress toward completion, project start dates, loan portfolio risk, testing methods and degree of software vendor dependence, the study concludes that earnings and market value won't be affected by Y2K problems. That doesn't mean that all banks will perform flawlessly, but it's a vote of confidence. In another such assessment, The Gartner Group, a Connecticut consulting firm, ranked the financial services industry No. 1 in Y2K preparedness. This report is reassuring, but is just one of many facts the banking industry must convey to consumers and businesses. Consumers will be concerned about whether or not ATMs will work on Jan. 1, 2000, about whether their checks and other payments will clear, and about whether bank computers will accurately remember who they are, what they owe and when, and what's in their accounts. A recent study by the Information Technology Association of America shows nearly 25 percent of Americans now think their daily lives will be disrupted by the millennium bug. Of those, 80 percent worry their financial records will be distorted. Now is the time to prevent that quarter of the population from swelling to half. Despite the fact that accounts are FDIC-insured, panic- driven runs on banks would fulfill the worst predictions of massive bank failures. But as Franklin Roosevelt once put it (also with reference to banks) "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Bankers want you to have the facts. Nearly 60 percent of the banks responding to a recent California Bankers Association survey said that more than 75 percent of their "mission critical" systems are provided by outside vendors -- companies that specialize in complex data bases and software to process transactions, and have a huge stake in correcting computer-code problems. Most other California banks also rely heavily on systems provided by vendors. Federal regulators and banks are requiring extensive testing to ensure that these systems are ready, so that smaller institutions will be just as well prepared as banks with greater resources. Banks have put a great deal of time, effort and resources into dealing with this problem. Some started major in-house projects several years ago. Large and small banks, as well as software vendors, are being aggressively examined by regulatory agencies that have made Y2K their top priority. In no other industry is such thorough attention being given to Y2K's being required. Banks are expected to spend upward of $4 billion rewriting code and testing systems. The first round of confidential regulatory exams by the FDIC of Federal Reserve nonmember state banks, for example, found that 88 percent of these generally smaller banks are taking the appropriate measures to be ready for the big deadline. Only 43 of 6,034 U.S. banks were found to be "unsatisfactory," though nearly 700 banks nationwide must pick up their pace or correct minor deficiencies. Regulators will continue to actively monitor slower banks. Small businesses must be made aware that theirs, too, is a serious, multidimensional problem that needs to be carefully addressed. A study conducted by the National Federation of Independent Business and sponsored by Wells Fargo Bank shows only 6 percent of small-business owners are seriously concerned about the issue, although 78 percent of those businesses have computers that might be at risk. Half said they have no intention of doing anything about it. As part of our own planning, bankers will be educating and verifying the preparedness of our small-business customers and consumers. The FDIC has prepared a good Year 2000 brochure for customers, as have many banks. Banks are offering seminars and video presentations for their business customers. Loan officers are being trained in Y2K issues, and loan documents often have covenants to ensure Y2K readiness. Any business institution that depends on computer systems -- or systems with imbedded chips -- and continues to ignore the Y2K is living on borrowed time. The challenge banks now face is to make sure our business customers are aware of the need to prepare, and to help drive their preparations, just as federal regulators are monitoring the banks and software providers. The U.S. Small Business Administration has a Y2K awareness campaign in place, but the Wells Fargo-NFIB survey indicates that most small businesses are not yet seriously confronting the issues they face. This education process will continue to be a massive effort, because ultimately the health of the banks and the economy depend on the continuing creditworthiness of bank customers. The ATMs may well be ready to go, but if data transmission lines or electricity are nonfunctional, cash will still be a problem. If you were depending on getting your new drivers license to open an account or cash a check, you may still be out of luck. And if you're writing a check or using a card on the Internet to charge plane tickets to fly to Europe, where Y2K still ranks low on priority lists, it may not matter that our payment system works just fine. This is not about finger-pointing. It's about financial, business and governmental institutions ensuring that the array of multidependent computer systems cross the Jan. 1, 2000 finish line with a minimum of disruption. Bankers will be a real force pushing the process forward. Kathleen Burke, vice chairman for corporate human resources for Bank of America, is president of the California Bankers Association, which represents more than 300 banks. <snip> _____________________________________________________________ The Age (Australia) 9/16/98 CIA funded covert Tibet exile campaign in 1960s By JIM MANN <snip> For much of the 1960s, the CIA provided the Tibetan exile movement with $1.7million a year for operations against China, including an annual subsidy of $180,000 for the Dalai Lama, according to newly released US intelligence documents. The money for the Tibetans and the Dalai Lama was part of the CIA's worldwide effort during the early years of the Cold War to undermine communist governments, particularly in the Soviet Union and China. The government committee that approved the Tibetan operations also authorised the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. The documents, published last month by the State Department, illustrate the historical background of the situation in Tibet today, in which China continues to accuse the Dalai Lama of being an agent of foreign forces seeking to separate Tibet from China. <snip> <snip> The declassified historical documents provide the first inside details of the CIA's decade-long covert program to support the Tibetan independence movement. At the time of the intelligence operation, the CIA was seeking to weaken Mao Zedong's hold over China. And the Tibetan exiles were looking for help to keep their movement alive after the Dalai Lama and his supporters fled Tibet after an unsuccessful 1959 revolt against Chinese rule. <snip> <snip> The newly published files show that the collaboration between US intelligence and the Tibetans was less than ideal. ``The Tibetans by nature did not appear to be congenitally inclined towards conspiratorial proficiency,'' a top CIA official says ruefully in one memo. One document indicates that annual Tibet expenses totalling $1,735,000 continued for four years, until 1968. At that point, the CIA cut the budget to just below $1.2million a year. <snip> <snip> The US Government still provides some financial support for Tibetans, but openly and through other channels. In recent years, Congress has approved about $2 million annually in funding for Tibetan exiles in India. <snip> _______________________________________________________________ BBC Online 9/14/98 The hero with no one to mourn him <snip> A man who died for his country over 50 years ago will be buried with full military honours on Friday - but none of his relations will be there to mourn him. The remains of British Corporal George Froud, who was killed during the Battle of Arnhem in 1944, were discovered last year. The Ministry of Defence has tried in vain to track down any of Cpl Froud's remaining relatives so they can attend the memorial ceremony in Holland. Mandy Marks at the MoD has been searching for Cpl Froud's relatives for the past nine months. "The main problem is that we know he had a son, but he was adopted at a young age and those records are confidential. We don't even know if his son knows who his father was," she said. Using old regiment records Ms Marks did manage to locate Douglas Payne who was best man at Cpl Froud's wedding and was godfather to his son. But Mr Payne is too ill to travel to Holland to attend his friend's funeral. Dog tags Peter Francis at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission said he could be identified because his army 'dog tags' were found with the body. "Finding remains in this way happens fairly regularly in France and Holland," he said. "We get called in to help identify them. There are a great deal of unknowns, particularly from World War I, because they have already spent 80 years in the ground - but this time we got lucky," he said. <snip> ________________________________________________________________ San Francisco Chronicle 9/11/98 Court Allows Ballots To Remain Secret In Brentwood Case Ruling on park maintenance tax vote Christopher Heredia <snip> Brentwood prevailed in court yesterday in its fight to shield ballot records from scrutiny by opponents of the city's controversial park maintenance tax, which property owners approved in April. Contra Costa Superior Court Referee Judith Sanders ruled that the right to ``voter secrecy'' in the mail-in election outweighed the opponents' interest in inspecting the records. Sanders wrote that case law makes clear the ``fundamental democratic principles protected by secrecy in voting.'' Resident Joe Grcar and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association sued for access to the records, claiming that developers and other large property owners tipped the scales in favor of a special assessment of an annual $79 tax for park maintenance. Assessment district votes are weighted by how much land each property owner has. City officials and residents who supported the tax in April said Brentwood needs more money for parks. Opponents said the revenue would not be distributed evenly throughout the city, citing a plan for more parks in south Brentwood than in northern neighborhoods. Mayor John Morrill, who voted to keep the ballots private in a city council decision last month, applauded Sanders' ruling. ``We made the commitment to the public, under state law, that we would protect their right to privacy; no matter how the election was handled, we told them their votes would remain confidential,'' Morrill said. Timothy Bittle, deputy counsel for the taxpayers association, said the group will appeal the decision. Bittle maintained that the documents are public records and residents should be able to inspect them to verify the outcome of the vote. ``I don't think the minimal discomfort that some hypersensitive people will have . . . is as important to our American form of government as the protection against fraud or the potential of fraud in balloting,'' Bittle said. Grcar and other opponents of the tax also raised the specter of ballot tampering, given the controversial nature of the vote and the fact that the city and opponents have placed dueling measures on the tax on the November 3 ballot. The election was required under Proposition 218, which calls for property owners to approve special tax assessments for services such as public landscaping and park maintenance. <snip> ________________________________________________________________ Ebusiness 9/9/98 Links to the Past by Kazz Regelman <snip> Questions as old as Adam and Eve, as old as blood: who am I? Where did I come from? Answers as new, and possibly as close, as the keyboard at your fingertips: the Internet has become a major tool for genealogical research, helping find links -- hyperlinks, you might say -- to the past. Money Does Grow on Trees Sites devoted to genealogical information range from small home pages to the big business of familytreemaker.com owned by Broderbund, currently negotiating to merge with The Learning Company. It is the most profitable as well as the only commercial site in the top ten nominations for genealogy sites by the on- line "Family Chronicle." <snip> <snip> familytreemaker.com, and other sites like ancestry.com and lineages.com, rightly point out that their sites can save money and time for avid hobbyists who might spend thousands of dollars on everything from postage to airplane tickets and hotels doing genealogical research the traditional way. While software and sites do not completely eliminate the need for those expenditures, they do allow a large portion of research to be done for next- to-nothing. Plus, researchers can search for information around the world without leaving their desks. In tracking by PC Metrics, familytreemaker.com regularly rates in the top four for non-pornographic sites in terms of length of visits, with over half a million hits and approximately 50,000 unique visitors daily. Many are drawn by a wealth of free information, including the Internet Family Finder which scans all genealogical sites for individual names, an "agent" service that e-mails you when any site on the Web containing the name you are searching for subsequently appears, and the Genealogy Site Finder with indexed links. <snip> <snip> The experts warn of traps, however, and one of the biggest is to rely solely on the Internet. What is most useful about the Web is its efficiency. Howell notes that "it's easy and saves expenses on postage, photocopying, long- distance phone bills. It saves the time, too, that it used to take to mail something off and wait for a response." Scott Barker, of lineages.com says that "the Web has brought a much wider group of people together to share information. Before the Web, your only options were either local or national societies which would meet monthly at most. Now you can go online at your whim and leave messages or schedule chats. Also the wealth of free information in the form of articles, how-to's, and actual data is incredible. That said, nothing currently replaces the need to visit a record repository. If you are actually going to do genealogical research, you must learn how to find and understand old documents. Too many people currently think they can go online and just download their entire family history." The Internet is useful primarily as a link to potential family members, other researchers, and caretakers for more traditional resources which, until all the information is scanned and entered online, provide irreplaceable information. Of these, the Family History Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, is perhaps the single best one-stop source for most Americans. Nevertheless, not everything exists in one electronic archive. Don't overlook the value of family bibles, old-country or home-town churches and synagogues, marriage and birth records, cemeteries, and local history sections in town libraries. I even found new cousins simply by noticing and contacting another user with the same unusual surname registered on bigfoot.com. But most of all, don't forget the easiest and single most helpful source of family history around -- your family. Ask older relatives for given names, maiden names of aunts, uncles, grandparents in the old country, village names, church names, street addresses, anything they can remember that might help track down relatives and documentation. Look for primary source information online if possible (check the special link on Cyndi's List or the new genealogylibrary.com). But once you've tracked down what seems to be a good lead, you'll need to look at the documents the old fashioned way -- with an original or photocopy in your hands. The Seeds of Future Sites Barker predicts that "genealogy sites will continue to expand and become more commercial as many have realized that it costs substantial amounts of money to supply this information online. I think you will see more and more Member Only sites in the future as well." Howell adds that "90% of what's out there is put online by hobbyists. And because genealogists are passionate about their hobby, it will just keep growing as people transcribe records -- bibles, wills, birth and death records -- and share information." <snip> _________________________________________________________________ AP 9/15/98 Back-Up Starr Documents Stored in Secure House Building <snip> WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nobody comes in, nobody goes out -- except members of the House Judiciary Committee and a few aides trying to decide whether President Clinton's conduct warrants a full-blown impeachment inquiry. Secrecy is the rule for those allowed inside H2-186, the Ford House Office Building room where some 2,000 pages of supporting material for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's report is stored. David Schippers and Abbe Lowell, the committee's senior Republican and Democratic investigators, were first in the room on Friday to begin sifting through the tapes and transcripts stored there. <snip> <snip> If Schippers and his team of investigators from Chicago thought Chairman Henry Hyde had set aside glamorous digs for their tenure here, they must have been sorely disappointed. Their offices -- and the secure room -- reside in one of Congress' most remote and least striking buildings within a complex better known for majestic white marble and sweeping vistas. Overlooking a freeway tunnel five blocks from the Capitol, the rectangular, six-story structure formerly belonged to the FBI and now houses committee and subcommittee aides. Those who have worked inside say it lacks the bustle and formal atmosphere of office buildings that house the lawmakers. The advantage is more peace and quiet in which to work. Those cleared to enter the room must sign in and sign out with a U.S. Capitol Police officer stationed in the first-floor hallway 24 hours a day. No one may bring anything into the room, take notes while there or carry anything from the room, according to sources close to the committee. House rules prohibit those who enter from discussing the material they review there. Inside, the room is split into four sub-chambers, according to those who have been inside the suite. One room stores the 17 boxes of appendices and tapes submitted by Starr. Republicans and Democrats get one private office each to review the material. One main room, accessible to all, has a long conference table. <snip> ______________________________________________________________ Reuters 9/15/98 Civil War Soldier Gets Book Deal <snip> NEW YORK (Variety)- A Civil War soldier has just won a book deal-- posthumously, of course. With a $355,000 bid, Simon & Schuster's Free Press division beat 13 rivals to win world rights to the diaries and detailed map and battle depiction drawings of Robert Knox Sneden, who served as a topographical officer with the 40th Battalion in New York and spent time in the dreaded Andersonville prison. The Virginia Historical Society, which acquired the materials from dealers as well as an anonymous Sneden family member, now owns the documents and thus benefits from the deal. Free Press senior editor Peter Nichols plans to publish the book, tentatively titled "Eye of the Storm," in fall 2000 and hopes for a documentary or other dramatic tie-in for the book. <snip> (Personal Note: I have seen a small exhibit of this material at the VHS. It is fantastic. My first thought when viewing it was I hope that they are thinking of publishing it. Guess I was on track with the Society) <snip> Peter A. Kurilecz CRM, CA [log in to unmask] A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List! To subscribe, send e-mail to [log in to unmask] In body of message: SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname To unsubscribe, send e-mail to [log in to unmask] In body of message: UNSUB ARCHIVES Or use the web interface at http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html Problems? Send e-mail to [log in to unmask]