More than Information, other than Knowledge: the Nature of Archives in the Digital Era

The nature of archives has been defined over time according to the use made of them. The records of an archival fonds have been considered facts, acts, sources, evidences and, in more recent times, equated with information and even knowledge. This evolution is mostly linked to the use of digital technology for creating records and the consequent blurring of the boundaries among the various types of digital objects generated within electronic systems. This trend is undermining our ability to create records that are reliable and to maintain archives so that they can be proven authentic over the long term. It is therefore essential to re-establish a concept of archives based on the circumstances of its creation, to define the characteristics that distinguish records from any other digital entity, and to protect them in trusted recordkeeping system capable of ensuring that their nature will be altered intentionally or accidentally

Review of Do Archives Have Value?

This book is about the value of archives in all of its connotations: value as evidence, memory, culture, source for a variety of practical purposes, and, most interestingly, value as means of financial gain for corporations. Each chapter emphasizes values in a variety of contexts: from Malawi, Australia, and the United Kingdom, to India, Hong Kong and Japan. In the process of discussing such values, several authors explain how archives came to be accumulated and preserved in their countries and how these processes have determined the value, as well as the worth, of their archives today. Though the chapters are rather uneven, the introduction contextualizes them well enough

The concept of record in experiential, interactive and dynamic environments: can the InterPARES project address the ultimate archival challenge?

This paper discusses the concept of electronic record as articulated and used in the context of the InterPARES Project, a multinational and multidisciplinary research project that aims at developing the theoretical and methodological knowledge essential to the long-term preservation of authentic records created and/or maintained in digital form. This knowledge should provide the basis from which to formulate model policies, strategies and standards capable of ensuring the longevity of such material and the ability of its users to trust its authenticity. InterPARES has developed in two phases, the first of which was concerned with electronic records created and/or maintained in databases and document management systems, and the second with electronic records existing in experiential, interactive and dynamic digital systems. The paper describes the characteristics, elements, attributes and components of electronic records and, doing so, itshows how the concept of record in the electronic environment is at the same time much more precise that in the traditional one, and in constant evolution

Je fais confiance à l'intelligence artificielle : Les enjeux, le projet, l'impact

The project aims to use AI to establish and maintain the trustworthiness of digital records. To this purpose it uses the concepts and methods of archival diplomatics and Deep Learning (DL), a subfield of machine learning and AI. DL is achieved by creating artificial neural networks in multiple layers that learn from input data through supervised learning. The objectives are to improve existing tools and create new machine learning tools for various records needs, using image recognition, optical character recognition, text summarization and classification, and more. The decision-making responsibilities are shared among academic and non-academic partners.Several studies are conducted to achieve the projects objectives objectives. One study aims to identify Private Personal Information (PPI) in records and link the labeling to diplomatics labeling. another study focuses on using DL to recognize the identity attributes of digitized parchments from medieval times through a tool called PERGANET. This tool could have a wide range of applications, including recognizing individual writing styles, analyzing archival annotations, and making AI datasets publicly available.Another study focuses on documenting the AI process, drawing on multiple fields, including social sciences, explainable AI, and archival studies. The goal is to answer questions regarding accountability and transparency in the use of AI and provide guidelines for creating and preserving records of AI processes and their outcomes.The I Trust AI project aims to combine the strengths of different fields and produce practical results that benefit society and address the challenges posed by the rapidly advancing field of AI, and DL in particular, ensuring its responsible and ethical use while realizing its potential benefits in various fields such as archives, cultural heritage, and governance.Le projet I Trust AI vise à utiliser l'IA et le deep learning pour garantir la fiabilité des archives numériques. Le projet combine les concepts et les méthodes de la diplomatie archivistique et du deep learning pour améliorer les outils d'apprentissage automatique existants et en créer de nouveaux pour répondre aux divers besoins archivistiques, tels que la reconnaissance d'images, la reconnaissance optique de caractères, la synthèse et la classification de texte. Le projet implique des partenaires académiques et non académiques qui partagent les responsabilités de prise de décision.Plusieurs études sont menées pour atteindre les objectifs du projet, telles que l'identification des informations personnelles privées (IPP) dans les archives et leur association à l'étiquetage diplomatique. Une autre étude se concentre sur l'utilisation du deep learning pour reconnaître les attributs d'identité des parchemins numérisés du Moyen Âge à l'aide de PERGANET. Cet outil a de nombreuses applications potentielles, telles que la reconnaissance des styles d'écriture individuels et l'analyse des annotations archivistiques.Le projet vise également à documenter le processus d'IA en s'appuyant sur les sciences sociales, l'IA explicative et les études archivistiques pour répondre aux questions de responsabilité et de transparence dans l'utilisation de l'IA et fournir des lignes directrices pour la création et la conservation d'archives des processus d'IA et de leurs résultats.Dans l'ensemble, le projet I Trust AI vise à produire des résultats pratiques bénéfiques pour la société et à relever les défis posés par le domaine en évolution rapide de l'IA, en particulier le deep learning. Le projet vise à garantir l'utilisation responsable et éthique de l'IA tout en réalisant ses avantages potentiels dans divers domaines tels que les archives, le patrimoine culturel et la gouvernance

Ethics in the Cloud

For the past several decades, information communication technologies (ICTs) have been changing the way we create, share, and keep our records and data. How are we adapting? Today, individuals and organizations are increasingly creating, sharing, and storing information of all kinds in the cloud, some of them with the same expectations of privacy, access, intellectual rights, and control they have when storing it in in-house systems, either digital or analog. Such expectations provoke outrage when it is discovered that behavior in the cloud is not guided by long-established ethical rules guiding information creation, sharing, and use, but needs to be controlled by legal contracts and enforced by laws, many of which are ill-equipped to cope with the affordances of new technologies. Ethical expectations and guidelines that have been socially situated in a print culture developed over centuries are suddenly thrown into debate by technologies that may change yearly. What is the nature of information ethics in the digital era? In the context of the cloud environment, the ideas of privacy, access, intellectual rights, ownership, and control need to be reinterpreted and given new meaning. But ethical considerations concerning presentation of information through traditional channels of communication do not translate seamlessly to online communities. Information ethics, generally understood to be a branch of applied ethics, has developed to address the main ethical issues with information communication technologies – privacy, accuracy, property or ownership, and accessibility. These are considered within contexts of responsibility and trust. This article explores the landscape of emerging ethical issues related to the creation, use, and maintenance of digital materials in cloud computing platforms in the course of our business and personal activities

The long-term preservation of the digital heritage: a case study of universities institutional repositories

The article faces the problems related to long-term preservation of the digital archives content. Archival material requires a special attentio due to credibility, juridical value, moral and legal rights, and privacy. The need to ensure accessibility and integrity of informatic data is a problem that involves all aspects and fields of informatization, and it is closely related to metadata choice and duplication. Through the analysis of the case-study represented by cIrcle, the istitutional digital repository della University of British Columbia (UBC), the article shows problems, risks, and solutions in managing a digital archive, showing that the professional experience of archivists can be useful in order to develop technological systems for non-archivistic contents

Characterization of Keratinocyte Differentiation Induced by Ascorbic Acid: Protein Kinase C Involvement and Vitamin C Homeostasis11The authors declared not to have a conflict of interest.

Epidermal keratinocytes undergo differentiation in response to several stimuli to form the cornified envelope, a structure that contributes to the barrier function of skin. Although differentiation has been extensively analyzed, the precise role of vitamin C during this process is still not defined. Ascorbic acid, besides acting as a radical scavenger, has been shown to promote mesenchymal differentiation. In this study, we found that keratinocytes grown in ascorbate-supplemented medium developed a differentiated phenotype, as demonstrated by enhanced expression of marker genes and increase in cornified envelope content. The pro-differentiating effects of ascorbate were mediated by the protein-kinase-C-dependent induction of activating protein 1 DNA binding activity; indeed, down-modulation of protein kinase C activity abolished differentiation triggered by ascorbic acid. Although vitamin C appeared to regulate the same signaling pathway modulated by calcium, a classical in vitro inducer of epidermal differentiation, nonetheless terminally differentiated keratinocytes exhibited different ascorbate homeostasis and cellular antioxidant status. Indeed, we found that, unlike calcium, differentiation promoted by ascorbate was accompanied by (i) an enhanced ascorbate transport, due to overexpression of specific transporters, (ii) a great efficiency of dehydroascorbate uptake, and (iii) an increase in glutathione content with respect to proliferating cells. Ascorbic acid may be useful to promote epidermal differentiation, avoiding depletion of hydrophilic antioxidant stores