The Authenticity of Electronic Records: The InterPARES Approach Luciana Duranti and Jean-François Blanchette School of Library, Archival and Information Studies University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Abstract The InterPARES Project began in 1999 with the purpose of developing the theoretical and methodological knowledge essential to the permanent preservation of authentic digital records and to formulate model policies, strategies, and standards capable of ensuring that preservation. Its first phase, which was concluded in 2001, produced requirements and methods for the creation, maintenance, selection, and preservation of authentic digital records, mostly generated in the course of administrative activities. The second phase, which began in 2002, studies records created in the course of artistic, scientific, and e-government activities. Images are thus an important focus of the on-going research, which involves specialists from the film and computer industries, archivists, as well as photography and film scholars. This session will present the findings of the first phase of InterPARES that are relevant to the preservation of the authenticity of digital images and will describe case studies that are being carried out in the second phase of InterPARES to meet the challenge of the authentic preservation of records generated in the course of artistic, scientific, and e- government activities. I. Introduction The International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems, known as the InterPARES project, began in 1999 and completed in 2001. 1 Its goal was to develop the theoretical and methodological knowledge essential to the permanent preservation of authentic records generated and/or maintained electronically, and, on the basis of this knowledge, to formulate model policies, strategies and standards capable of ensuring that preservation. The first phase of InterPARES was set out to deal with digital records mandated for accountability and administrative needs, which are usually created in very large databases and document management systems. The creation, maintenance and use of this type of records by the organization producing them are highly controlled, thus the InterPARES research has focused on the preservation of authenticity after the records are no longer needed by the creating body. The research used concepts and methods from a variety of disciplines, including diplomatics, archival science, law, computer science, computer engineering, and statistical sciences. The team included co-investigators from the public and private sectors of Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, Netherlands, France, Portugal, Italy, Australia, China, and Hong Kong. The intellectual mediation and integration that occured among disciplines and cultural traditions are expressed in the project’s glossary of terms. II. Fundamental Concepts and Assumptions The work began with a definition of the fundamental concepts, in consideration of the interdisciplinarity of the project and the tendency of the disciplines involved to borrow terms from each other attaching them quite different meanings. The terms on the use of which the researchers needed to agree at the outset were “record” and “authenticity”. Record was defined as any document made or received in the course of activity as a means and instrument for it, and set aside for action or reference. An electronic record was defined as a record maintained for use in electronic form. In order to distinguish records among all other kinds of information that may reside in a digital system, the research team named several identifiable characteristics, deriving from the fact that a record can be viewed as a complex of elements and their interrelationships. First and foremost, a digital entity is a record if it has a fixed form. A record is considered to have a fixed form when its binary content, including indicators of its documentary form, is stored in a manner that ensures it remains complete and unaltered, and when the message of the record is capable of being rendered with the same documentary form it had when it was first set aside. In addition to a fixed form, a digital entity that is a record must have an unchangeable content, an explicit linkage with other records within or outside the digital system through a classification code or some other unique identifier, an identifiable administrative context, an author, an addressee and a writer. Finally, a digital entity that is a record must participate in or support an action either procedurally or as part of the decision making process. Authenticity was defined as the trustworthiness of records as records, as distinct from reliability, which is the trustworthiness of a record as a statement of fact and the exclusive responsibility of the record creator, rather than of its preserver. An authentic record is a record that is what it purports to be, immune from corruption or tampering.