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January 27, 2009

John N. Davis

Airbrushing History

Kalev Leetaru and Scott Althaus, of the Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois, have written a report that I thought others here would find interesting. The report is called "Airbrushing History, American Style: The Mutability of Government Documents in the Digital Era," and puts one in mind of the Ministry of Truth imagined by George Orwell in Nineteen eighty-four: a novel (London: Secker & Warburg, 1949).

John Davis joined the faculty of Osgoode Hall Law School in 2000, and teaches Intensive Legal Research and Writing. He was the Law Librarian at Osgoode from 2000 to 2005. From 1987 to 2000, he was an Associate Professor and the Law Librarian at the University of Victoria. From 1981 to 1987, he was the reference librarian and a sessional lecturer at the University of Manitoba. He also practised law for a time in Cayuga, Ontario. His pre-law studies were in computer science.
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2 Comments on “Airbrushing History”

  1. Laurel Murdoch says:
    January 27, 2009 at 1:34 pm

    John, you may find this article, forwarded to me by Barbara Fingerote of McCarthy Tetrault, interesting as well.
    "A Tool to Verify Digital Records, Even as Technology Shifts" By JOHN MARKOFF, New York Times, January 27, 2009. "Simple-to-use digital technology will make it more difficult to distort history in the future."

  2. Wendy Reynolds says:
    January 27, 2009 at 4:45 pm

    Thanks for this, John! It's useful to have hard data to point to when talking to government about digital records preservation.

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