Archives in the Digital Age. Abderrazak Mkadmi
Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу Archives in the Digital Age - Abderrazak Mkadmi страница 6

СКАЧАТЬ

      Archives are currently undergoing a transition from a predominantly analog environment to an increasingly digital world, and consequently from a material format to bit and byte encryption. This transition challenges us to adapt our working methods to this new hybrid environment. We talk more and more about digital archives. This term, which we will discuss in detail later, announces a priori the liberation of information from its material supports and the dissociation between content and medium. Following the deployment of IT tools in government agencies in the 1980s, the number of native digital archives has grown considerably.

      In addition, archival services are called on to implement tools and methods to collect, classify, preserve and communicate to the public these new types of archives. Digital archiving is not storing data, but rather keeping them in an intelligent way in order to be able to exploit them over time and maintain their integrity and authenticity.

      In addition, not only has there been a diversification of documents and the technological tools that have come into being, there has also been an explosion in the documents and information flows that we have to collect, preserve and disseminate. Indeed, companies produce a voluminous rate of information on a daily basis that can be estimated at thousands of terabytes. We are talking about Big Data or large data in the form of zetta or petabytes coming from different mobile technologies, social media, online transactions, objects and connected sensors [KAR 14].

      However, this concern to preserve everything over a long period of time, generally represented by the right to remember, is confronted with another right, that of being forgotten. This right is often linked to the freedom of individuals who are condemned to living without privacy and without freedom in the face of the mistakes of their past [ARR 16]. The right to be forgotten, generally presented as a right to individuals to be able to erase everything, to make themselves disappear and/or not to keep information concerning them, runs up against expressions linked to memory, such as perpetuation and imprescriptibility.

      In this book, we will focus on the possible conciliation of these two principles related to remembering and forgetting. This is a task that does not seem easy, but it is possible when we already know all the work that has been done on the protection of personal data (data processing and freedoms) in view of the rights relating to information, access to administrative documents, transparency and so on. More work is needed on the conformity of legal texts related to both the right to remember and the right to be forgotten. “From this point on, it is no longer a question of ‘memory at all costs’ [LEG 02], but of a collective memory that respects the freedoms of individuals and their legitimate aspiration to be forgotten by society” [ARR 16].

      Chapter 1 introduces the concept of a digital archive, the elements of the concept and the basic tools for managing the archive, namely, directory of typical files, functional classification scheme (also known as a file plan/a classification scheme) and retention schedule. This chapter also explains the various relationships between digital archives and technologies, such as electronic records management and records management.

      Chapter 3 tries to position the issue of digital archives in what we now call the era of digital humanities. The challenge is to see to what extent the digital humanities have changed archives, their tools, their functionality and their methods of preserving documents. A detailed presentation of the various definitions of digital humanities and their relationship to digital archives will be given with examples of platforms and software, and how to place digital humanities at the heart of long-term preservation.

      Chapter 4 explains the problems of Big Data management and archiving. This technology represents the evolutionary explosion of digital data and documents in all fields of activity, as well as the frantic pace of their production. The challenge is to demonstrate the need to restructure the processes and methods of archiving data characterized by large volume, variety and velocity. A selection of the main tools and technologies of Big Data is presented, and particular attention is paid to blockchain technology as a data traceability technology that, coupled with preservation standards, could represent the future of digital archiving in the era of Big data.

      1 1 Theory developed by the French archivist and historian Yves Pérotin in 1961. This model gained legal recognition in France with the adoption of the law of January 3, 1979 on archives.

      1

      Digital Archives: Elements of Definition

      1.1. Key concepts of digital archives

      Before talking about digital СКАЧАТЬ