The following guest post is by Butch Lazorchak, a digital archivist at the Library of Congress. It is cross posted on The Signal.
Digital technology makes documents easy to alter or copy, leading to multiple non-identical versions that can be used in unauthorized or illegitimate ways. Unfortunately, the ease of alteration has introduced doubt in users’ minds about the authenticity of many of the digital documents they encounter.
Lawyers are understandably concerned with issues of authenticity, but librarians and archivists bring value in that the archival processes of provenance and authenticity have long helped their patrons accept the authority of documents. These processes can be readily applied to digital materials, and if the approach can be compelled through the force of law, all the better.