Metadata Requirements for Evidence

Managers in application domains from commerce to health care, and from research and development to manufacturing, are seeking to define standards for data interchange adequate for their business purposes. The literature is replete with discussions of how to enable end-to-end electronic business interaction, how to support the requirements of electronic patient records or electronic laboratory notebooks, and how to implement the documentation demanded by CALS or ISO-9000.

At the same time, managers of existing information networks and technical personnel charged with planning the National Information Infrastructure of the future, are encountering the requirements to identify, control access, manage software dependencies, represent the business meaning, and document the use of data, in these vast, distributed, heterogeneous, computing environments.Many observers feel that unless we can satisfy requirements for "integrity", "authenticity", "reliability" and "archiving" of digital information, the National and Global Information Infrastructures will never be able to support serious work.

The professions traditionally concerned with evidence and records have not ignored these emerging requirements.  At the University of Pittsburgh School of Library and Information Science, faculty and students engaged in a research project funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission have been examining the "Functional Requirements for Recordkeeping" as defined in a broad range of sources from law, regulation and best practices. From this "literary warrant" they have derived a specification of the attributes of "recordness" or evidentiality.