Access and Data Security

Intro

Now that we have finally created our digital archive, we could be forgiven for being eager to share it with its intended users and beneficiary communities, as we envisioned at the beginning of the process in our Guiding Principles. However, providing access to any archive’s content, especially to a human rights violations archive, is not simple or straightforward. Access is closely linked to preservation but also to nearly all other processes and functions in a digital archive. Most closely, however, access is related to the data security function of an archive. These two functions are also the focus of the third stage of a digital archive’s life cycle: its safe opening to the world.