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Authenticity of a digital archive is quite a complex matter and involves a number of factors. Are the individual items within the archive faithful copies of the original and does the archive as a whole have integrity? Autheniticity of a digital archive depends on effective, ongoing management strategies to ensure that the archive and individual items in it are not accidentally or deliberately changed.

Policies and procedures for authenticity at the title level

The National Library has a number of policies and procedures in place to keep the contents of the PANDORA Archive authentic, especially its intellectual content.

Substantial effort is invested in ensuring the authenticity and integrity of each individual title. In copying a publication or web site into the Archive, the policy is to maintain its 'look and feel', that is, its appearance and functionality, as well as its contents, to the fullest extent possible. In most cases this is achievable. In some cases, however, because of the technical set up of a site, or because of the limitations of current harvesting technology, it is not possible to reproduce a site exactly. Some functionality may be missing, for instance, the ability to conduct a search of an archive of back issues on the web site of an e-journal. Functions that involve interaction with publishers' sites have to be disabled.

Where it is not possible to replicate exactly the 'look and feel' and functionality of a title with current technology, the Library takes a pragmatic view and argues that it is better to compromise on these aspects for the benefit of being able to preserve the intellectual content. It is essential that the intellectual content is preserved exactly as produced by the publisher. All sites are quality checked and are accurate copies of the publishers' sites at time of archiving. Date of archiving of each instance is collected by the system and is clearly indicated on the title entry page for each title.

Preservation activity to keep titles accessible as hardware and software changes may also result in some changes to 'look and feel' in time. Once again, preservation of the intellectual content exactly as produced by the publisher will be of paramount concern.

Policies and practices for authenticity at the Archive level

At the Archive level, a number of policies and practices are in place to preserve authenticity.

At least three copies of each instance (regathered copy of a title) are kept.

The preservation and access masters are stored separately from the access copy on the Library's secure Digital Object Storage System (DOSS). Backup tapes of both the DOSS and the PANDORA Archive server are maintained, including copies that are stored off-site.

These practices contribute to the authenticity of the Archive in the following ways:

Persistent identifiers

Another aspect of authenticity is persistence. Each item in the Archive, from title level right down through instances and parts of instances to component files, has a unique persistent identifier automatically assigned by the digital archiving system. This enables researchers and authors to cite works and parts of works, for instance, an article in an e-journal, using the appropriate persistent identifier. Readers can return to the cited item in the Archive again and again, confident that it will remain there persistently and that it will be the same.