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Trusted repositories have been discussed for many years, and attributes proposed based on OAIS (TRAC, nestor et al.) with current work taking the proposed certifications towards ISO standards. I would like to discuss whether these demonstrations meet the requirements or expectations of some or all of our user constituencies (technologists/system builders, depositors, curators, end-users, organisational management) - in essence whether the demonstrations match the perceptions. A further aspect which I think is worthy of discussion is how digital trust relates to traditional trust. Curating digital material is only an extension or format shift of a mission which organisations have been carrying out for many years. Rarely do depositors require demonstrations of strong-room standards-compliance (e.g. BS5454) so is trusted repository status an exercise purely for the specialists? Will trust continue to be placed in the organisation regardless of technical demonstrations? What, if anything, do trusted certifications need to demonstrate that they are not already?

Capturing People's Digital Contexts:  original order, appraisal and description.

Catherine Hobbs, Library and Archives Canada

Creators of archives are living digital or hybrid lives in terms of the media of their records and they are also living with portable devices.  Archivists have traditionally served to capture the context of record-keeping and this can have very specific shades within the lives of individuals.  

I would like to discuss how we interpret original order and what we ask creators about their record-creating habits and decision-making with the digital realm (e.g.  Perhaps we shouldn't assume the same priority for records that are digitally abandoned but yet kept somewhere on a hard drive).  How can we glean the creator's perspective on their own record-keeping and life with technology during the site visit and appraisal, and then transfer these elements to description?  We can't rely on automatically harvested metadata or even emulation to capture these aspects for us.  New approaches may involve asking the right questions, changing appraisal values, expanding description or even modelling relationships between technologies and documents in ways that make apparent the personal context of these records.