The state's highest court is to tackle the issue of access to court records - particularly computerized records - today when it examines a proposal that recommends making access the same for paper and electronic records.

The proposal, the work of an 18-member panel, satisfies businesses, buyers of court data in bulk, and news media that want the computerized records to remain available and the database expanded to cover all state courts. Such information is used for everything from landlords' reference checks to investigative news reporting.

"Crime is interstate now. And if you cannot get information, you are up a creek without a paddle," said lawyer Alice N. Lucan, who represented commercial data compilers on the committee.

The suggestions, which the Court of Appeals might vote on today, are broad policy statements. They include:

Urging the court system to plan for a future in which more records are filed and maintained electronically.

Devising an easy way for people to correct mistakes they find in their own records.

Continuing and expanding courts' phone-in system of access to electronic material.

Committee members and advocates say the proposal balances privacy and access concerns at a time when courts around the country face a future likely to include paperless files and more people wanting more information more readily.

The aim is to allow access to identifying particulars, while keeping secret such information as bank accounts.

Typical ways to keep information secret in paper files - filing a "John Doe" lawsuit, and keeping financial information confidential in a divorce case, for example - would apply to the computerized files as well under the proposal.

"Anything that is available in a file cabinet should be available online," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "Ordinary citizens rely on this information."

In the past few years, many states have either set rules for electronic access or started examining the thorny issues, said Alan Carlson, president of the Justice Management Institute, which joined with the National Center for State Courts to devise model rules for what courts ought to consider when they look at public access guidelines.

The laws vary widely among the states. For example, Vermont does not provide bulk information, while Iowa has no special rules for electronic access to court records and Missouri has a single, unified online database for all docket information.

This was the second Maryland committee to look at the issues. Recommendations by a panel of government officials in 2000 to sharply restrict access to computerized data were pilloried as wrongheaded by the media, businesses and private investigators. That panel backed down and advocated convening the second, more broadly based group that includes a private investigator, banker, representatives for the American Civil Liberties Union, landlords, news media and others.

One recommendation that might prove difficult to implement is making access uniform around the state so that people are not disadvantaged by where they live. While the state's district courts have a single computer system, its two dozen circuit courts do not.

"I'm not real impressed with that recommendation just as a practicality. What the Circuit Court for Wicomico County can do may be a lot different from what the Circuit Court of Montgomery County can do," said Joseph F. Murphy Jr., chief judge of the Court of Special Appeals, the state's intermediate appeals court.

But Murphy said that access to information is crucial. He recalled that what helped him win a case decades ago as an attorney was turning up court records that indicated a key witness against his client was a chronic liar.

Larry W. Shipley, clerk of the Carroll County Circuit Court, said that implementing the policy will fall to clerks' offices, and when it comes to computerization, they "are at different levels with different systems that do not talk to each other."

Shipley said he favors having all requests "of major significance" handled through a central office for all circuit courts to assure the same information from each court.

Through a spokeswoman, Robert M. Bell, chief judge of the Court of Appeals, said he would not speak about the proposal until the 2 p.m. hearing in Annapolis.