ResourceBlog Article: RECAP Documents Now More Searchable via Internet Archive & Google

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Tuesday, 20th April 2010

RECAP Documents Now More Searchable via Internet Archive & Google

A Post on the RECAP Web Site Homepage Notes:

We recently made a small change to the way that documents uploaded by RECAP users are made available on the Internet Archive. Until today, the Internet Archive had served primarily as a bulk hosting provider, without much ability to browse or search the archive. This was enforced in two ways: First, it was not possible to search for documents using the Internet Archive’s search tools. Second, external search engines were prevented from indexing the site.

Privacy concerns are a major concern and have made RECAP work "extreme precaution."

Since we launched, we have spent a great deal of time examining these issues, and we decided to make a small incremental step in making the documents more findable without (yet) allowing in-depth full-text search of all documents. We have enabled Internet Archive indexing, as well as search engine indexing, for the case summary pages on the Internet Archive. That means, for example, that the relatively limited information on the AT&T v. Hepting case summary page is now searchable.

You can find this case through the Internet Archive search engine by doing a query like this:
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=collection:usfederalcourts
AND hepting

You can find this case through a Google query like this:
http://www.google.com/#&q=site:archive.org usfederalcourts hepting

As we continue to gain a better understanding of the privacy issues at stake, we will likely make further improvements to this system. We welcome your feedback.

If you would like a bit of background (How it Works and Links to More Info) about RECAP, here goes:

RECAP is the service service that provides access to some U.S. Federal legal documents. It launched at the end of August, 2009 and is a project from the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University.

To be more specific, this paragraph from Wired has the info:

RECAP, a Firefox-only plugin, that rides along as one usually uses PACER — but it automatically checks if the document you want is already in its own database. The plug-in’s tagline, ‘Turning PACER around,’ alludes to the fact that its name comes from spelling PACER backwards. RECAP’s database is being seeded with millions of bankruptcy and Federal District Court documents, which have been donated, bought or gotten for free by open-government advocate Carl Malamud and fellow travelers such as Justia.

And if the document you request isn’t already in the public archive, then RECAP adds the ones you purchase to the public repository.

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