VÖ 65: Born Digital in the Cloud: Challenges and Solutions

Foreword

by Karen Anderson, Irmgard Christa Becker and Luciana Duranti

The 21st Archival Science Colloquium was run as an International Symposium in cooperation with InterPARES Trust (ITrust), with the title “Born Digital in the Cloud: Challenges and Solutions”. “InterPARES Trust is a multi-national, interdisciplinary research project exploring issues concerning digital records and data entrusted to the Internet. Its goal is to generate theoretical and methodological frameworks to develop local, national and international policies, procedures, regulations, standards and legislation, in order to ensure public trust grounded on evidence of good governance, a strong digital economy and a persistent digital memory.” (https://interparestrust.org/trust). The most significant challenge presented by born digital material in the cloud is its trustworthiness. Trustworthiness is crucial for digital archives. Archivists need policies, standards and procedures to warrant the trustworthiness and security of digital archives when they make them accessible on the internet and exchange descriptive data online. They also need instruments to ensure the trustworthiness of archives created, used and/or stored in cloud environments.

Researchers in the ITrust project presented the findings of eight studies concerning the trustworthiness of digital archives in the cloud. Lluís-Esteve Casellas analysed how e-services impact on records management systems and stated the necessity of their integration. Based on a comparison of Turkish and international metadata sets of cultural heritage resources, Özgür Külcü developed a new set of metadata for Turkish cultural heritage. Julie McLeod showed how indistinct aims, poor governance, and bad communication hindered people’s trust in the British care.data program. Giovanni Michetti presented the requirements for preserving authentic records in the cloud. Gillian Oliver discussed how the views of indigenous people can be taken into account when information is disseminated online. Chris Prom et al. analysed standards of arrangement and description with regard to their usability in the cloud, establishing the need for non-hierarchical descriptive tools. Corinne Rogers presented a checklist supporting the development of contracts with cloud providers that guarantee the continuing trustworthiness of records. Jim Suderman analysed the interaction between citizen engagement and records management. Finally, two German archivists, Robert Kretzschmar and Christian Keitel, presented the strategy adopted by the Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg to establish a trustworthy digital repository.

The articles showcased the many studies related to trustworthiness that were conducted and their findings. The Marburg Archives School has been a partner of InterPARES Trust since 2013. InterPARES Trust offered the colloquium as a platform to exchange knowledge between its researchers and German archivists. We hope you will find many inspiring ideas in these articles for the management and preservation of trustworthy records and archives in the cloud.

We wish to thank Theresa Rösler and Christoph Kling for the lay-out and copy-editing of this volume.