Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The integrity of a resource refers to its wholeness. A resource has
integrity when it is complete and uncorrupted in all its essential
respects. These essential respects will be discussed in much greater
detail in the Sect. 13.6 .
The identity of a resource, from this point of view, has a very
wide meaning, beyond its unique designation and/or identification.
Identity refers to the whole of the characteristics of a resource that
uniquely identify it and distinguish it from any other resource. In
addition to its internal conceptual structure, it refers to its general
context (e.g., legal, technological). From this point of view, identity is
strongly related to PDI: Context, Provenance, Fixity, Reference and
Access Rights Information, as defined in OAIS, help to understand
the environment of a resource.
This information has to be gathered, maintained, and interpreted
together - as far as possible - as a set of relationships defining the
resource itself: a resource is not an isolated entity with defined bor-
ders and autonomous life, it is not just a single object; a resource
is an object in the context, it is both the object itself and the relation-
ships that provide complete meaning to it. These relationships change
over time, so we need not only to understand them and make them
explicit but also to document them to have a complete history of the
resource: we cannot omit it without also losing a bit of the identity of
the resource, with consequences on its authenticity.
13.2 OAIS Definition of Authenticity
It must be admitted that in the original version of OAIS authenticity was not dealt
with very well; however the OAIS update has significantly improved the situation
and we use the definitions from that update.
OAIS defines Authenticity as:
the degree to which a person (or system) may regard an object as what it is
purported to be. The degree of Authenticity is judged on the basis of evidence.
We have the associated definition:
Provenance Information is the information that documents the history of the
Content Information. This information tells the origin or source of the Content
Information, any changes that may have taken place since it was originated, and
who has had custody of it since it was originated. The archive is responsible
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