RE: [-empyre-] authenticity

[Luciana Duranti <luciana@interchange.ubc.ca>]

At 07:30 PM 14/02/2005 +1100, Simon wrote:

> I find this quite extraordinary. I had never considered that particular 
> digital formats could have different cultural values. Is this authentic? 
> How would anyone know that the email is not a work of fiction. Like the 
> InterPARES correspondence that you mention, every conversation that the 
> Flight of Ducks has engendered over the last 10 years is included in the 
> site. In fact it is embedded in conversation. And like InterPARES, the 
> aggregated site is regularly captured by PANDORA. As you say, 'the 
> natural, interrelated, impartial, authentic, unique residue of it as it 
> has accumulated over time'.
>
> I guess I'm about as close to this residue as you can get, yet I have no 
> viable mechanism for indicating that the email is genuine, authentic or 
> true, other than the context in which it is gathered and made accessible 
> to all.
>
> To honour this context I have contaminated the message with markup and 
> (like this discussion) with hyperlinks to the thread. Is this form of 
> contamination a bad thing. Ted Nelson would argue that it is harmful. 
> Perhaps the act of archiving or gathering is a form of contamination?

Well, as long as it is clear what is your contribution and what was 
originally there, it is ok to make the context accessible, but yes, this 
kind of archiving does contaminate the record because it introduces your 
interpretation of it. Perhaps, you should preserve separately your 
contaminated version.


> Have I misunderstood the point you were making?

No, I think you understood it.

Luciana



Luciana Duranti
Chair and Professor, Archival Studies
Director, InterPARES Project
School of Library, Archival and Information Studies
The University of British Columbia
Suite 301 -  6190 Agronomy Road
Vancouver, B.C.V6T 1Z3 Canada
Tel. 604/822-2587
FAX 604/822-6006
www.interpares.org
www.slais.ubc.ca/people/faculty/