Archiving in the networked world: authenticity and integrity

Purpose - This article aims to discuss how concepts from the analog world apply to a purely digital environment, and look in particular at how authenticity needs to be viewed in the digital world in order to make some form of validation possible. Design/methodology/approach - The article describes authenticity and integrity in the analog world and looks at how to measure it in a digital environment. Findings - Authenticity in the digital world generally means, in a purely technical sense, that a document's integrity has been checked using mathematical algorithms against other copies on independently managed servers, and that provenance records show that the document has a clearly established succession from a clearly defined original. Readers should recognize that this is different than how one defines authenticity and integrity in the analog world. Originality/value - Most of the key issues surrounding digital authenticity have not yet been tested, but they will be when the economic value of an authentic digital work reaches the courts.