Trustworthy Digital Images and the Cloud: Early Findings of the Records in the Cloud Project - Challenges of Information Management Beyond the Cloud - page 43

Trustworthy Digital Images and the Cloud: Early
Findings of the Records in the Cloud Project

Jessica Bushey

GRA, Records in the Cloud Project, iSchool @UBC,
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
[e-mail]

Abstract. Digitized and born digital images are being created and disseminated
at an ever-increasing rate as the by-products of business activities and the
residue of organizational culture. In the past decade, the popularity of
digitization as an archival activity aimed at preserving vulnerable archival
materials and providing increased access to archival collections has presented
archivists with a number of challenges including: platform interoperability,
access controls, scalable infrastructure and privacy and rights management. The
Cloud presents a range of solutions to the problems posed by managing large
data sets such as digital image collections; however, at this early stage the
benefits and risks associated with cloud-based services are still being identified.
This paper will discuss the current state of digital imaging and highlight key
issues in the creation and use, management, and preservation of digital images
as trustworthy records in the context of an evolving online environment.

Keywords: Digital images, archives, cloud computing, trustworthy records.

1 Introduction

The broad theme of the 4 th International Symposium on Information Management in a
Changing World (IMCW2013) is the role of Cloud Computing in current information
management issues. This paper discusses the current state of digital imaging in
individual and organizational contexts and highlights the key issues in the creation, use,
management and preservation of trustworthy digital images in commercial online
environments. Emphasis will be placed on the role of the information professional in the
digital era and key factors for and against adoption of cloud-based services by
organizations (including archival institutions) for storing and accessing their collections
of digital images. The author is a graduate research assistant with three projects, in
which digital records management and preservation in the online environment are being
explored: Records in the Cloud (RIC) (<http://www.recordsinthecloud.org>), the Law
of Evidence in the Digital Environment (LEDE) (<http://www.lawofevidence.org>),
and InterPARES Trust (<http://www.interparestrust.org>).
This paper focuses on the RIC project, which is a 4-year international research
collaboration between the University of British Columbia (UBC) School of Library,
Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS), the Faculty of Law, and the Sauder