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15 Legal Information Alert 1 (1996)

handle is hein.lbr/leinfal0015 and id is 1 raw text is: 9, e What's new in legal publications, databases, and research techniques Volume 15, No. 1 January 1996 Contents What's New on Lexis and Westlaw For Your Infomalon 1 6 Libraran at Large 8 New Publicatons 10 Calendar 18 Publishers 19 Index 19 EDGAR Update: The Proliferation of Commercial Products By Bonnie Fox Schwartz On October 1, 1995, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) unveiled its home page, with access to the EDGAR database as its centerpiece. This event occurred after the demise of the Town Hall EDGAR site and the offer by commercial vendors- notably Disclosure and Global Securities Information-to provide EDGAR access through their Internet home pages to publicize their value-added products. EDGAR users are now blessed with several Net sites, as well as a proliferation of related on- line and CD-ROM products from database producers and document delivery services. EDGAR, the acronym for Electronic Data Gathering and Retrieval, symbolizes the vast collection of corporate filings made directly and electronically to the SEC. With more than 15,000 public companies required by law to report on such activities as quarterly and annual financials, stock ownership changes, and securities offerings; the SEC, by the 1980s, was literally flooded with documents. Therefore, in a move toward a paperless world, an effort was launched to automate the process of filing, reviewing, and disseminating SEC information. Voluntary participants engaged in a pilot project in 1984; and after eight years, the fully operational system was launched in 1992. By August 1995, when two additional groups were phased in, approximately 6,500 registrants were EDGAR filers. All companies will be required to file electronically by May 1996. Without EDGAR, the SEC would stagger under 10 million pages a year. With the full functioning of EDGAR almost accomplished, debate now centers on how to make this electronic data accessible to the public. Even though all the information is supposed to be available without cost, the data exists on the SEC database only in the form of gigabytes, raw numbers, and ASCII text. The SEC initially chose Mead Data Central (now Lexis-Nexis since its acquisition by Reed-Elsevier) to handle the dissemination of EDGAR information to interested parties on a wholesale basis. (Mead also enjoyed the contract to develop the initial continued on next page

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