Digital transformations and the archival nature of surrogates

Large-scale digitization is generating extraordinary collections of visual and textual surrogates, potentially endowed with transcendent long-term cultural and research values. Understanding the nature of digital surrogacy is a substantial intellectual opportunity for archival science and the digital humanities, because of the increasing independence of surrogate collections from their archival sources. The paper presents an argument that one of the most significant requirements for the long-term access to collections of digital surrogates is to treat digital surrogates as archival records that embody traces of their fluid lifecycles and therefore are worthy of management and preservation as archives. It advances a theory of the archival nature of surrogacy founded on longstanding notions of archival quality, the traces of their source and the conditions of their creation, and the functional ‘‘work of the archive.’’ The paper presents evidence supporting a ‘‘secondary provenance’’ derived from re-digitization, re-ingestion of multiple versions, and de facto replacement of the original sources. The design of the underlying research that motivates the paper and summary findings are reported separately. The research has been supported generously by the US Institute of Museum and Library Services.Institute for Museum and Library ServicesPeer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111825/1/J26 Conway Digital Transformations 2014-pers.pdfDescription of J26 Conway Digital Transformations 2014-pers.pdf : Main articl

Goal-based safety cases for medical devices : opportunities and challenges

In virtually all safety-critical industries the operators of systems have to demonstrate a systematic and thorough consideration of safety. This is increasingly being done by demonstrating that certain goals have been achieved, rather than by simply following prescriptive standards. Such goal-based safety cases could be a valuable tool for reasoning about safety in healthcare organisations, such as hospitals. System-wide safety cases are very complex, and a reasonable approach is to break down the safety argument into sub-system safety cases. In this paper we outline the development of a goal-based top-level argument for demonstrating the safety of a particular class of medical devices (medical beds). We review relevant standards both from healthcare and from other industries, and illustrate how these can inform the development of an appropriate safety argument. Finally, we discuss opportunities and challenges for the development and use of goal-based safety cases in healthcare