Authenticity - Advanced Digital Preservation - page 204

Properties has been much discussed, especially with respect to Rendered Digital
Objects. We show how this can be extended to Non-rendered Digital Objects, and
how it fits into the work on Authenticity. Finally we apply these concepts and mod-
els to a number of digital objects from real archives, using a tool based on the
conceptual model.
13.1 Background to Authenticity
Authenticity is a key concept in digital preservation, and some would argue that is it
the pre-eminent concept, in that unless one can show that the data object is, in some
provable sense, what was originally deposited, then one cannot prove that digital
preservation has been successful.
On the other hand OAIS defines preservation in terms of understandabil-
ity and usability as well as authenticity; it therefore provides a view in which
Representation Information and Authenticity are equal partners.
It is worth noting the distinction made by InterPARES [ 150 ], although specif-
ically referring to records , between verification and maintenance of authenticity.
Some would argue that everything is a record but this point will not be discussed
here.
Verification of authenticity is “the act or process of establishing a correspon-
dence between known facts about the record and the various contexts in which it
has been created and maintained, and the proposed fact of the record's authenticity”
[ 151 ].
Maintenance of authenticity is related to records which “have been presumed
or verified authentic in the appraisal process, and have been transferred from the
creator to the preserver”.
This topic focuses on both the maintenance of authenticity i.e. providing a con-
tinuing chain of evidence about the custodianship and treatment of the information
as well as the verification of authenticity in so far as a Consumer must be able to
make that judgement.
13.1.1 Links to Previous Literature
A separate position paper [ 24 ] reviews the InterPARES authenticity work in
more detail; the main conclusions from that paper are included in this topic.
However it is worth mentioning two concepts which are regarded in the litera-
ture as crucial, namely integrity and identity of digital resources; authenticity is
regarded as being established by assessing the integrity and the identity of the
resource.