Archivist's Library – serie

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. 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.

This work addresses theoretical and practical issues relating to the reliability and authenticity of records created in the electronic environment by organizations of all kinds. It explores both the conceptual and practical problems of the design of record-keeping systems that allow organizations to maintain reliable and authentic electronic records. It analyzes the elements of electronic records using diplomatic analysis, thoroughly explains the concepts of reliability and authenticity as applied to records, and provides a careful exposition of the methods for creating and maintaining reliable and authentic electronic records. The research for this book was conducted in conjunction with the United States Department of Defense and influenced its standards for electronic record-keeping, which have been widely adopted by software manufacturers.

Collaborative decision making processes are a form of communication inside organizations. Their functioning can teach lessons for the design of electronic office systems. Those processes are open ended and therefore decide themselves on their form. Like oral deliberations which cannot be modelled in advance any open ended communication process needs means for common control over the further advancement and the ending of the process.The history of German administrative practice and its special methods of using disposals for the control of common processes shows the creation of records as based on communication needs generated by the intention of joint actions. For electronic decision making processes the purposes remain the same, but the means have to follow the effects of electronic communication on messages.The book is a reworked English version of a thesis for the official qualification for university professorship accepted by the German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer. Germany.

Distributed networks such as the Internet have altered the fundamental way a record is created, captured, accessed and managed over time, and therefore who controls, has access to, and is responsible for its authenticity. Law and ethics provide the major sources of regulatory controls over participants in such networks. This book analyses the interrelationship of recordkeeping, ethics and law in terms of existing regulatory models and their application to the Internet environment. It proposes the legal and social relationship model as an analytical tool for identifying the rights and obligations of recordkeeping participants in networked ‘business’ transactions within communities of common interest based on trust. The model is also used to examine the legal concepts of property, access, privacy and evidence, with particular reference to its Internet context. As legal relationships have their basis in the law of obligations found in both common and civil law systems, as well as archival science, the model has a broad-based application. The approach in this book has been to reconcile a number of archival traditions - the common strands rather than the differences, in particular concepts of identity, trust, acts, actors, and social relationships - as fundamental concepts to social regulation. It is therefore primarily directed to archives and records academics and practitioners (especially those working within the realm of electronic records), in order to provide them with a sound theoretical and practical knowledge of the legal and ethical dimensions of records created in distributed environments.

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.

This book addresses theoretical and practical issues relating to the reliability and authenticity of records created in the electronic environment by organizations of all kinds. It explores both the conceptual and practical problems of design of record-keeping systems that will allow organizations to maintain reliable and authentic electronic records. It analyzes the elements of electronic records using diplomatic analysis, thoroughly explains the concepts of reliability and authenticity as applied to records, and provides a careful exposition of the methods for creating and maintaining reliable and authentic electronic records. The research for this book was conducted in conjunction with the United States Department of Defense and influenced its standards for electronic record-keeping, which have been widely adopted by software manufacturers. Audience: This book is aimed at anyone involved in creation, maintenance, and preservation of electronic records, such as records managers, information systems managers, archivists. It will also serve as a basic text for students of records management and archives in post-secondary educational institutions.

Collaborative decision making processes are a form of communication inside organizations. Their functioning can teach lessons for the design of electronic office systems. Those processes are open ended and therefore decide themselves on their form. Like oral deliberations which cannot be modelled in advance any open ended communication process needs means for common control over the further advancement and the ending of the process.The history of German administrative practice and its special methods of using disposals for the control of common processes shows the creation of records as based on communication needs generated by the intention of joint actions. For electronic decision making processes the purposes remain the same, but the means have to follow the effects of electronic communication on messages.The book is a reworked English version of a thesis for the official qualification for university professorship accepted by the German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer. Germany.