Authenticity of Digital Records: A Survey of Professional Practice

摘要

Authenticity of digital material is an enduring concern. However, while most people intuitively understand what authenticity is, few are able to identify exactly what is required to ensure, assess, and guarantee it. Heuristic and hermeneutic assessments of authenticity do not support any quantifiable measures of authenticity. Several important research projects have studied the means of ensuring that authenticity is protected throughout the life cycle of digital material, however, even as archival research and scholarship continue to offer insight into the nature of authentic digital objects and their preservation, new technologies, specifically distributed networked systems connected through the Internet, create new challenges to security and authenticity. This article reports on the author's research into the practices of records and information professionals to ensure, assess, and/or protect the authenticity of digital records and data.