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Re: Archiving websites



I would like into generating a secure certificate/key combination that
is essentially the universities signature.  I don't know how this would
work exactly, but I see a lot of emails, and files, that have PGP
signature, etc., and assume that you can either encrypt the file using
this signature, or append the signature to the file, which can be
checked against a certified original.  This would prove the file is
certified by your university, and that no one has tampered with it.

I am more familiar with the webserver side of this, where we have
generated a certificate, and send that certificate to a company such as
verisign,  who signs it and certifies that we are the University of
North Texas.  This allows clients/browsers to hit the secure portions of
our site, and the browser has a list of known Certificate Authorities,
such as Verisign.  If the browser doesn't recognize the cert to be
signed by one of these authorities, then it asks you if you want to
accept the cert and continue to the site.  Therefore, I assume you could
do the same with the copies of the catalogs.
--
Shannon Peevey
Central Web Support
UNT-Computing Center
speeves@unt.edu
940-369-8876

> "Sokolow, Daniel" wrote:
>
> Wouldn't some form of legal documentation suffice?  A letter from the
> University President or Legal Dept. stating "officially that as of
> 9/2002, all catalogs are issued electronically, and have the same
> legal validity as the paper versions" would seem to do it.  I'm
> assuming the university is safe, legally, in moving to e-catalogs, so
> if it's good enough for current business use, it should be good enough
> for archival reference.
>
> If, as you imply, all the paper versions are considered legal tender
> for proving the course existed as stated, the e-versions should do as
> well.  The big problem is the alterability (is that a word?) of
> electronic documents.  While I know PDF files (back to that again!)
> have a digital signature capability, I suppose that could be altered
> too by a nefarious person, though I imagine if the documentation
> states that the archives copy is the copy of record, as long as yours
> stays unmolested, you should be fine.
>
> I'd also raise the possibility of using metadata to authenticate the
> catalog - in HTML, for example, a comment in the header acknowledging
> it as the official copy.  Not knowing a lot about metadata in other
> formats, I'm not sure how else to do it, but...
>
> DS
>
>
> ______________________________________
> Daniel Sokolow, Archives Coordinator
> David Taylor Archives
> North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System
> 155 Community Drive
> Great Neck, NY 11021
> mailto:dsokolow@nshs.edu
>
>      -----Original Message-----
>      From: Wayne Miller [mailto:wayne.miller@PLATTSBURGH.EDU]
>      Sent: Friday, June 28, 2002 9:46 AM
>      To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
>      Subject: Archiving websites
>
>      Glad to see this discussion renewed. Clearly, their are
>      several big problems with archiving. The mention of .ASP,
>      for example, as well as Cold Fusion, point to the fact that
>      many 'pages' are actually created on demand and quickly go
>      out of existence. More to the point as the data bases from
>      which these pages are drawn including Oracle, Access, and
>      other 'traditional' data bases, but now include things live
>      XML files and the stylesheets and transformations that
>      deliver a viewable product. Which 'page' or file is the one
>      that should be archived? Since 'viewing' the xml file really
>      doesn't convey the information it represents (except to
>      those who really care to extract/interpret it) and the file
>      is not visible except to those with editorial privileges,
>      this quickly descends into a technical morass.
>
>      Obviously, for static pages there is always the option for a
>      paper (gasp) output. Or, there is the option of leaving the
>      job to someone who specializes in this task, like the
>      Internet Archive: http://www.archive.org/index.html
>
>      But I would like to introduce a wrinkle that I now face. Our
>      college is about to do away with it's paper catalog. That
>      is, course descriptions will be available online only. We
>      respond to several queries each year from former students
>      who require documentation (course descriptions) for courses
>      they took five, ten, twenty years ago. This may be for
>      degree, transfer, or certification purposes. Even if we
>      'archive' the website, how can we in all honesty certify, as
>      I am sometimes required to do, that a copy of the site is a
>      'true representation' of the course description from that
>      time?
>
>      Wayne Miller
>      Plattsburgh State U of NY

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