E-Discovery Glossary

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30(b)(6) Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6), a corporation, partnership, association, or governmental agency is subject to the deposition process, and required to provide one or more witnesses to "testify as to matters known or reasonably available to the organization" on the topics requested by the notice without compromising attorneyclient privilege communications or work product. It is not unusual for the 30(b)(6) topics to be directed toward the discovery process, including procedures for preservation, collection, chain of custody, processing, review, and production. Early in the litigation, when developing a discovery plan, particularly with regard to electronic discovery, a party should be mindful of the obligation to provide one or more 30(b)(6) witnesses should the request be made by another party to the litigation, and include this contingency in the discovery plan.

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Ablate Describes the process by which laserreadable "pits" are burned into the recorded layer of optical discs, DVDROMs and CDROMs.

Ablative Unalterable data. See Ablate.

Acetatebase film A safety film (ANSI Standard) substrate used to produce microfilm.

ACL (Access Control List) A security method used by Lotus Notes developers to grant varying levels of access and user privileges within Lotus Notes databases.

ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Professional association for computer professionals with a number of resources, including a special interest group on search and retrieval. See http://www.acm.org.

Active Data Information residing on the direct access storage media (disc drives or servers) that is readily visible to the operating system and/or application software with which it was created. It is immediately accessible to users without restoration or reconstruction.

Active Records Records related to current, ongoing or inprocess activities referred to on a regular basis to respond to daytoday operational requirements. See Inactive Records.

ADC Analog to Digital Converter. Converts analog data to a digital format.

Address Addresses using a number of different protocols are commonly used on the Internet. These addresses include email addresses (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol or SMTP), IP (Internet Protocol) addresses and URLs (Uniform Resource Locators), commonly known as Web addresses.

ADF Automatic Document Feeder. This is the means by which a scanner feeds the paper document.

Adware See Spyware.

Agent A program running on a computer that performs as instructed by a central control point to track file and operating system events, and take directed actions, such as transferring a file or deleting a local copy of a file, in response to such events.

AIIM The Association for Information and Image Management, www.aiim.org – focused on ECM (enterprise content management).

Algorithm A detailed formula or set of steps for solving a particular problem. To be an algorithm, a set of rules must be unambiguous and have a clear stopping point.

Aliasing When computer graphics output has jagged edges or a stairstepped, rather than a smooth, appearance when magnified. The graphics output can be smoothed using antialiasing algorithms.

Alphanumeric Characters composed of letters, numbers (and sometimes noncontrol characters, such as @, #, $). Excludes control characters.

Ambient Data See Residual Data.

Analog Data in an analog format is represented by continuously variable, measurable, physical quantities such as voltage, amplitude or frequency. Analog is the opposite of digital.

Annotation The changes, additions, or editorial comments made or applicable to a document usually an electronic image file using electronic sticky notes, highlighter, or other electronic tools. Annotations should be overlaid and not change the original document.

ANSI American National Standards Institute, www.ansi.org a private, nonprofit organization that administers and coordinates the U.S. voluntary standardization and conformity assessment system.

Aperture Card An IBM punch card with a window that holds a 35mm frame of microfilm. Indexing information is punched in the card.

Application A collection of one or more related software programs that enable an enduser to enter, store, view, modify, or extract information from files or databases. The term is commonly used in place of "program" or "software." Applications may include word processors, Internet browsing tools, spreadsheets, email clients, personal information managers (contact information and calendars), and other databases.

Application Metadata Data created by the application specific to the ESI being addressed, embedded in the file and moved with the file when copied; copying may alter application metadata. See also Metadata.

Application Service Provider (ASP) An Internetbased organization hosting software applications on its own servers within its own facilities. Customers rent the use of the application and access it over the Internet or via a private line connection. See SaaS.

Architecture The term architecture refers to the hardware, software or combination of hardware and software comprising a computer system or network. The term "open architecture" is used to describe computer and network components that are more readily interconnected and interoperable. Conversely, the term "closed architecture" describes components that are less readily interconnected and interoperable.

Archival Data Archival Data is information an organization maintains for longterm storage and record keeping purposes, but which is not immediately accessible to the user of a computer system. Archival data may be written to removable media such as a CD, magnetooptical media, tape or other electronic storage device, or may be maintained on system hard drives. Some systems allow users to retrieve archival data directly while other systems require the intervention of an IT professional.

Archive, Electronic Archive Longterm repositories for the storage of records. Electronic archives preserve the content, prevent or track alterations, and control access to electronic records.

ARMA International A notforprofit association and recognized authority on managing records and information, both paper and electronic, www.arma.org.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) The subfield of computer science concerned with the concepts and methods of symbolic inference by computer and symbolic knowledge representation for use in making inferences an attempt to model aspects of human thought process with computers. It is also sometimes defined as trying to solve by computer any problem once believed to be solvable only by humans. AI is the capability of a device to perform functions that are normally associated with human intelligence, such as reasoning and optimization through experience. It attempts to approximate the results of human reasoning by organizing and manipulating factual and heuristic knowledge. Areas of AI activity include expert systems, natural language understanding, speech recognition, vision, and robotics.

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) Pronounced "askee," A nonproprietary text format built on a set of 128 (or 255 for extended ASCII) alphanumeric and control characters. Documents in ASCII format consist of only text with no formatting and can be read by most computer systems.

Aspect Ratio The relationship of the height to the width of any image. The aspect ratio of an image must be maintained to prevent distortion.

Attachment A record or file associated with another record for the purpose of retention, transfer, processing, review, production and routine records management. There may be multiple attachments associated with a single "parent" or "master" record. In many records and information management programs, or in a litigation context, the attachments and associated record(s) may be managed and processed as a single unit. In common use, this term often refers to a file (or files) associated with an email for retention and storage as a single Message Unit. See Document Family and Message Unit.

Attribute A characteristic of data that sets it apart from other data, such as location, length, or type. The term attribute is sometimes used synonymously with "data element" or "property."

Audit Log or Audit Trail In computer security systems, a chronological record of when users logged in, how long they were engaged in various activities, what they were doing, and whether any actual or attempted security violations occurred. An audit trail is an automated or manual set of chronological records of system activities that may enable the reconstruction and examination of a sequence of events and/or changes in an event.

Author or Originator The person, office or designated position responsible for an item´s creation or issuance. In the case of a document in the form of a letter, the author or originator is usually indicated on the letterhead or by signature. In some cases, the software application producing the document may capture the author´s identity and associate it with the document. For records management purposes, the author or originator may be designated as a person, official title, office symbol, or code.

Avatar A graphical representation of a user in a shared virtual reality, such as web forums or chat rooms.

AVI (AudioVideo Interleave) A Microsoft standard for Windows animation files that interleaves audio and video to provide medium quality multimedia.

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Backbone The top level of a hierarchical network. It is the main channel along which data is transferred.

Backfiles Existing paper or microfilm files.

Backup To create a copy of data as a precaution against the loss or damage of the original data. Many users backup their files, and most computer networks utilize automatic backup software to make regular copies of some or all of the data on the network.

Backup Data An exact copy of ESI that serves as a source for recovery in the event of a system problem or disaster. Backup Data is generally stored separately from Active Data on portable media. Backup Data is distinct from Archival Data in that Backup Data may be a copy of Active Data, but the more meaningful difference is the method and structure of storage that impacts its suitability for certain purposes.

Backup Tape Magnetic tape used to store copies of ESI, for use when restoration or recovery is required. ESI on backup tape is generally recorded and stored sequentially, rather than randomly, meaning in order to locate and access a specific file or data set, all ESI on the tape preceding the target must first be read, a timeconsuming and inefficient process. Backup tapes typically use data compression, which increases restoration time and expense, given the lack of uniform standards governing data compression.

Backup Tape Recycling Describes the process whereby an organization´s backup tapes are overwritten with new data, usually on a fixed schedule determined jointly by records management, legal, and IT sources. For example, the use of nightly backup tapes for each day of the week with the daily backup tape for a particular day being overwritten on the same day the following week; weekly and monthly backups being stored offsite for a specific period of time before being placed back in the rotation.

Bandwidth The amount of ESI that a network connection can accommodate in a given period of time. Bandwidth is usually stated in kilobits per second (kbps) or megabits per second (mps).

Bar Code A small pattern of vertical lines that can be read by a laser or an optical scanner. In records management and electronic discovery, bar codes may be affixed to specific records for indexing, tracking and retrieval purposes.

Batch File A batch file is a set of one or more instructions that are created in a computer program to perform a particular type of computer system function (.BAT is the DOS batch file extension).

Batch Processing The processing of a large amount of ESI in a single step.

Bates Number Sequential numbering used to track documents and images in production data sets, where each page is assigned a unique production number. Often used in conjunction with a suffix or prefix to identify the producing party, the litigation, or other relevant information. See also Production Number.

Baud Rate The number of times per second a communications channel changes the carrier signal it sends on a phone line. A 2400baud modem changes the signal 2400 times a second.

Bayesian Refers to the statistical approach of Thomas Bayes, an 18th C. mathematician and clergyman. Bayes published a theorem which shows how to calculate conditional probabilities from the combinations of observed events and prior probabilities. Many information retrieval systems implicitly or explicitly use Bayes" probability rules to compute the likelihood that a document is relevant to a query.

BBS (Bulletin Board System) A computer system or service that users access to participate in electronic discussion groups, post messages and/or download files.

BCS Boston Computer Society, one of the first associations of PC/Apple users (one of the largest and most active).

Beginning Document Number or BegDoc The Bates Number identifying the first page of a document or record.

Bibliographical/Objective Coding Recording objective information from electronic documents such as date created, author/recipient/copies, and associating the information with a specific electronic document.

Binary The Base 2 numbering system used in digital computing that represents all numbers using combinations of zero and one.

BIOS (Basic Input Output System) The set of userindependent computer instructions stored in a computer´s ROM, immediately available to the computer when the computer is turned on. BIOS information provides the code necessary to control the keyboard, display screen, disc drives and communication ports in addition to handling certain miscellaneous functions.

Bit A bit (binary digit) is the smallest unit of computer data. A bit consists of either 0 or 1. There are eight bits in a byte.

Bitmap A Bitmap provides information on the placement and color of individual bits, as well as allows the creation of characters or images by creating a picture composed of individual bits (pixels).

Bit Stream Backup A Bit Stream Backup is a sectorbysector/bitbybit copy of a hard drive. A Bit Stream Backup is an exact copy of a hard drive, preserving all latent data in addition to the files and directory structures. Bit Stream Backup may be created using applications such as Encase, SnapBack and Ghost. See Forensic Copy.

Bitonal A bitonal image uses only black and white.

BMP A Windows file format for storing bitmap images.

Bookmark A stored link to a Web site or page previously visited.

Boolean Search Boolean Searches use the logical operators "and", "or" and "not" to include or exclude terms from a search. See Natural Language Search.

Boot To start up or reset a computer.

Boot Sector/Record See Master Boot Sector/Record and Volumn Boot Sector/Record.

BPI (Bits Per Inch) BPI measures data densities in disc and magnetic tape systems.

Bps Bits per second.

Broadband Communications of high capacity and usually of multimedia content.

Browser An application, such as Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator, used to view and navigate the World Wide Web and other Internet resources.

Burn The process of creating a copy of information onto a CD, DVD or other storage media.

Bus A parallel circuit that connects the major components of a computer, allowing the transfer of electric impulses from one connected component to any other.

Business Process Outsourcing Business process outsourcing occurs when an organization turns over the management of a business function, such as accounts payable, purchasing, payroll or information technology, to a third party.

Byte (Binary Term) A Byte is the basic measurement of most computer data and consists of 8 bits. Computer storage capacity is generally measured in bytes. Although characters are stored in bytes, a few bytes are of little use for storing a large amount of data. Therefore, storage is measured in larger increments of bytes. See Kilobyte, Megabyte, Gigabyte, Terabyte, Petabyte, Exabyte, Zettabyte and Yottabyte (listed here in order of increasing volume).