RE: [-empyre-] authenticity

[Hackett Yvette <yhackett@lac-bac.gc.ca>]

Further to the discussion on authenticity...

And let me start my first post with an apology for some of the repetition -
it appears the spam filter at my institution has started blocking a random
selection of list messages, which I only realized today after I had prepared
this reply...

In addressing Margaretâs question about loss of authenticity in an
electronic record, 
I think I would actually like to start with two questions asked earlier by
jonCates: 

"i am very curious about this issue of authenticity... 
are you referring to work that does not originate in a digital form but
begins as analog or physical material, is transcoded to digital + thereby
>loses authenticity, i.e. through this process itself, or unintended
results, >or cultural uses, or aesthetic shifts, or technical constraints,
etc...?" 

Within the parameters of InterPARES research, an authentic record is one
that is what it purports to be and that is free from tampering or
corruption. When a record is authentic, it continues to convey the message
it was originally intended to convey. So authenticity in InterPARES does not
deal with whether a digital object started in analog form, though InterPARES
models are applicable in situations where the analog (and probably original)
form of the record has been destroyed, leaving only the digital copy which
now carries the burden of proof. 

"also, how does transmission result in a loss of identity [+/or] undermine
integrity?" 

Transmission across time endangers a digital object for all the reasons
already alluded to in many of the posts to date - missing hardware, missing
(or wrong version) of application software, and in a web environment,
browsers, plug-ins and viewers. 

Transmission across space endangers an object due to the general lack of
interoperability between competing products. Unlike text printed on paper,
the various components of an e-mail, for instance, are not âinextricably
linkedâ - header information or structure information can be stripped;
attachments can be separated; parts of the message itself can disappear. 

This is the âauthenticityâ that archivists are attempting to preserve, along
with the bitstream(s). The final report of the Preservation Task Force in
InterPARES 1 points out that archivists are being inaccurate when they say
that âthe recordâ has been copied onto a disk or tape for preservation, or
that âthe recordâ is contained in a specific computer file. The bitstream in
that file is insufficient to reproduce the record as it was originally
conceived without access to a number of additional pieces or âdigital
componentsâ. For example, a font file, which is actually an extension of the
Windows operating system, must be treated as a digital component of any
record that relies on the font for proper presentation. 

There is no standard relationship between digital components and document
concepts like record, file or series. It may be one-to-one, one-to-many,
many-to-one or many-to-many depending very much on individual situations. 

(For an archival organization, lack of hardware is primarily an acquisition
problem - if an archives takes into its holdings something with a hardware
dependency, InterPARES assumes the archives would not dispose of the
equipment, or break the equipment without having taken measures to end, or
modify, the dependency.) 

Paulâs discussion of NLAâs risk audit speaks directly to this concern for
proper reproduction of a holding, based on the availability of all necessary
digital components. 

The Preservation Task Forceâs final report has an Appendix (no. 6) entitled
âHow to Preserve Authentic Electronic Recordsâ which might be of interest,
and which provides much greater detail on their findings and the effect
these findings should have on traditional preservation practices. 

ïhttp://www.interpares.org/book/interpares_book_o_app06.pdf 

Yvette 
 


Yvette Hackett
Project Archivist/Archiviste de projet
Library and Archives Canada/BibliothÃque et archives Canada
395 Wellington St.
Ottawa, Ontario  K1A 0N4
phone:  (613) 996-8801
cell:  (613) 290-7737
e-mail:  yhackett@lac-bac.gc.ca

-----Original Message-----
From: empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
[mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Luciana Duranti
Sent: February 9, 2005 5:17 PM
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: RE: [-empyre-] authenticity

At 03:33 PM 2/8/2005, you wrote:

>Luciana
>
>I'm interested in your statement one message back:
>
>  Now, when the
>software-hardware environment in which the object is generated and or 
>kept begins to become obsolete, we upgrade it. This means that we are 
>changing the bit-stream of the object, much of its form, and much of 
>the information linked to the object.
>
>I'm not a technician and am often struggling with this, but what I had 
>understood from listening to various people talk on this subject is 
>that we can fairly easily preserve/maintain the bit-stream, but that 
>rendering it authentically is the problem.  Would you please comment 
>further on this?

Margaret, it is not a problem if you do the right things at the outset and
maintain the material according to certain procedures. What these are is a
long discourse. Yvette promised me that she would give a try at making it
short and sweet, so please wait for her reply, possibly tomorrow, Canadaian
time.

Luciana 

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