ADMINISTRATIVE NOTES Newsletter of the Federal Depository Library Program ------------------------------------------------------------------------ October 25, 1999 GP 3.16/3-2:20/14 (Vol. 20, no. 14) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Handout] Y2K and Depository CD-ROMs Fall 1999 Depository Library Council Meeting October 18 - 21, 1999 As of the end of September 1999, GPO has received Year 2000 (Y2K) compliance statements from the vendors listed below. The profusion of software used on CD-ROM publications distributed to depository libraries and the multitude of developers applying that software make it impossible to provide a simple blanket statement about Y2K compliance. GPO has been collecting Y2K statements from the companies that produce the software distributed to the libraries, and, to some extent, the software developers. In general, these sources tell a consistent, positive story, although there are many qualifiers. In essence, CD-ROMs are not inherently susceptible to Y2K problems. If your workstation is Y2K compliant, it is highly likely that any CD-ROM will operate on January 1, 2000 the same way it did on December 31. For CDs with textual data this is what is important. CD-ROMs with databases are more complicated. The CD-ROMs should operate in 2000 the same way they did in 1999, but if the developer of the CD entered any year/date fields in two digits, those fields will continue to be expressed as two digits. Expressing years in two digits is not considered Y2K compliant, although it will not affect the operation of the CD-ROM. Those users who extract databases from the CDs and import them into other programs will experience the most serious ramification of two-digit year fields. Even in this case, however, it is a simple matter in major database and spreadsheet programs to change two-digit dates to four digits with a global command. So, while some of the database CDs may not be strictly Y2K compliant, they will operate normally in 2000 and are unlikely to cause serious problems for the small percentage of users who may wish to copy and manipulate data off the CD-ROM. GPO has received compliance statements from: * Adobe, for Acrobat products (many GPO and agency-developed CDs) * Verity, for Search '97 (OSHA CDs through Spring 1999) * Dataware, for CD Author (used in many GPO-developed CDs) * Openmarket, for Folio Views (older OSHA CDs and others) * Inso, for DynaText (used on World Factbook CDs) * Insight (used on USA Trade) * Macromedia, for Shockwave and Flash * Jobjects, for QuestAgent Pro (on August 1999 and later OSHA CDs) These statements generally advise that while the software is compliant, it can be used in a non-compliant way, such as using it on databases with two-digit year fields. Some programs automatically display two-digit years in four-digit format. Some programs also convert the underlying data fields. In addition, one agency, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, has certified that its current CDs are compliant. They advise discarding older CDs, with the exception of archival products such as USAPat and USAMark. Libraries must be careful in discarding, however, because of the depository retention and superseded requirements for depository material. Here are some of the compliance problems we have discovered thus far: 1. Personal Librarian is now owned by America Online, which has stopped supporting it. America Online has stated that Personal Librarian will NOT be tested for Y2K compliance. Personal Librarian is used on the U.S. Code CD-ROMs, which are strictly textual, so we are not anticipating any problems. 2. The National Center for Education Statistics advised us that CDs provided earlier than 1997 had year fields in two digits. Examples: EDSearch, Education Statistics on Disk and the National Household Education Surveys Data files and Electronic Codebook. 3. STAT-USA has indicated that issues of the NTDB with Autographics software are not Y2K compliant. They will be switching to new software with the November issue. In addition, we have recently received a little information about the Y2K readiness of Folio software. This case is a bit more complicated than most because Folio and/or its new owners, Nextpage, are making a major effort to certify even old releases of its development software. To this end they posted a number of patches for previous versions on the page . The current version is compliant, with very minor issues having to do with the way licensing information for the development package is displayed to the developer. Published CDs, of course, do not contain the development software but search and retrieval software called Bound Views. In general, the same caveats that apply to the other CD programs apply to Folio Bound Views, i.e., on compliant workstations the CDs will operate next year as well as they do this year. If the developer of the CD publication used two-digit year date fields in building the CD, those fields will continue to be displayed as two digits. This is technically out of compliance but will not cause failures or operating errors when the CDs are used. Users who export data from these CDs will have to change the year date fields to 4 digits, a process that is accomplished globally or by default in most current spreadsheet and database software.