Digital Preservation in Norway’s Record Keeping and Archiving Traditions : an exploration of authenticity practices using mixed methods research

Abstract

This work is a study of the current authenticity practices of records in Norway. The study is limited to public administration records at municipality level, specifically municipality and city archives. Norway has a well structured records management tradition but when transferring records from the records creators to the archives, integrity is still inadequate for the current information demands with regards to authenticity, a prerequisite for Trust. This has been observed with the Noark records, as an instrumental case study. The results portray a picture of what is happening on the ground. The study found out that the archives are semi electronic with manually driven work processes. It is interesting that archives do not have access to the original full electronic records they are supposed to preserve apart from referential data of the records. This puts archives at cross roads since they do not have control over the original databases until 25 years later when they fully take ownership of these records. Therefore with this prevailing scenario, recommendations have been made urging for the need to close this gap in a more trust worthy manner rather than relying on the traditional goodwill assumption which has no scientific verification. The ABM group and the archival community in general is urged to consider revising this time span period and make it shorter, implement file sharing through reliable authenticated systems to meet reliable information demands of the 21st century. This research is of significance to the ABM group and general archival community in Norway and beyond that can identify with Norway‘s current authenticity management of archival records.