Trusting Records The Evolution Of Legal Historical And Diplomatic Methods Of Assessing The Trustworthiness Of Records From Antiquity To The Digital Age

A trustworthy record is one that is both an accurate statement of facts and a genuine manifestation of those facts. Record trustworthiness thus has two qualitative dimensions: reliability and authenticity. Reliability means that the record is capable of standing for the facts to which it attests, while authenticity means that the record is what it claims to be. This study explores the evolution of the principles and methods for determining record trustworthiness from antiquity to the digital age, and from the perspectives of law and history. It also examines recent efforts undertaken by researchers in the field of archival science to develop methods for ensuring the trustworthiness of records created and maintained in electronic systems. Audience: The target audience for this study is legal scholars working in the field of evidence law, historians working in the field of historical methodology, and recordkeeping professionals (records managers, information technology specialists, archivists) working on the design and implementation of contemporary organizational recordkeeping systems.

A trustworthy record is one that is both an accurate statement of facts and a genuine manifestation of those facts. Record trustworthiness thus has two qualitative dimensions: reliability and authenticity. Reliability means that the record is capable of standing for the facts to which it attests, while authenticity means that the record is what it claims to be. This study explores the evolution of the principles and methods for determining record trustworthiness from antiquity to the digital age, and from the perspectives of law and history. It also examines recent efforts undertaken by researchers in the field of archival science to develop methods for ensuring the trustworthiness of records created and maintained in electronic systems. Audience: The target audience for this study is legal scholars working in the field of evidence law, historians working in the field of historical methodology, and recordkeeping professionals (records managers, information technology specialists, archivists) working on the design and implementation of contemporary organizational recordkeeping systems.

Searching for Trust explores the intersection of trust, disinformation, and blockchain technology in an age of heightened institutional and epistemic mistrust. It adopts a unique archival theoretic lens to delve into how computational information processing has gradually supplanted traditional record keeping, putting at risk a centuries-old tradition of the 'moral defense of the record' and replacing it with a dominant ethos of information-processing efficiency. The author argues that focusing on information-processing efficiency over the defense of records against manipulation and corruption (the ancient task of the recordkeeper) has contributed to a diminution of the trustworthiness of information and a rise of disinformation, with attendant destabilization of the epistemic trust fabric of societies. Readers are asked to consider the potential and limitations of blockchains as the technological embodiment of the moral defense of the record and as means to restoring societal trust in an age of disinformation.

This book breaks new grounds in the scholarship of archival science, providing information of nearly 200 authors. This is the first book that describes in one publication the intellectual contributions of all major archival authors in bibliographic context.

Community Informatics is a developing field which brings together understandings about the interaction of communities and information and communication technologies from fields as diverse as Management and Information Systems, Library and Information Sciences, Community Development, Sociology, or Social and Community Welfare. A key assumption of community informatics is that technologies can be used for positive social change and development, particularly with disadvantaged communities or communities that hitherto, have not had a public voice. The volume brings together international perspectives around defining and debating the idea of community memory which, as Alex Byrne, President of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions observed in his splendid and wide-ranging Introduction: "community memories are multilayered, changeable, conflicting and contested", and the multilayering, changeability and contest between different players provide fertile theoretical and practical ground for Community Informatics and its interdisciplinary cousins. "Community Informatics is an emerging new multi-disciplinary approach to the study of the intersection of communities and Information and Communication Technologies. This volume contains significant contributions from international practitioners and researchers in the fields of archives, record-keeping, community knowledge management, emerging information and communication technologies, history, community development-virtual as well as real-and Community Informatics as a growing discipline. The content of the book is a unique contribution in the field. The volume will be read by researchers, and communities interested in how they communicate their past, present, and future." —Professor Emerita Gunilla Bradley Informatics School of ICT Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) Stockholm Sweden "Practitioners, researchers and theoreticians in Community Informatics will find a unique array of valuable perspectives in this book. It covers the interaction of communities, memories and technologies in a highly original way, with regard to its breadth and the number of case studies it presents. It incorporates contributions from 13 countries in all parts of our endangered planet, thus providing the international perspective that is critical to understanding how communities can use technology for societal good." —Professor Michel Menou. Les Rosiers sur Loire, France, Associate, Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research, University College London, London, United Kingdom

Provides historical coverage of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Includes information abstracted from over 2,000 journals published worldwide.