centages are clearly acceptable to the vast mass of readers (other than those, one assumes, who believe in the “inerrancy” of the Bible and must therefore require a belief in a completely authentic text). However, suppose that “authenticity”
level were only 50 percent or 25 percent. How could one book be proclaimed a masterpiece and the other the word of God?
The authenticity of texts (and, for that matter, paintings, furniture, and other products of human skill and imagination) depends very much on docu- mented provenance. When it comes to books, particularly those published in the last 200 years, the book itself is its own documentation—a self-authentica- tor to those who know about books. There have been many forged books, but important forgeries have almost always been exposed—the vast majority of books are demonstrably what they say they are. Even more importantly, once authenticated, books remain the same. That attribute—fixity—when combined with the elaborate structures of writing, editing, publishing, bookselling, and reviewing, has led to an environment of trust and dependability that envelops author, reader, and scholar. Those who foresee the replacement of books by digital networks would do well to ponder the implications of such a shift, including the highly likely destruction of the environment of authenticity that has allowed scholarship and learning to flourish. There is a reason why plagia- rism is the deadliest sin of all in the world of learning—it is the ultimate betrayal of the trust that is the vital element of scholarship. If a piece of writing is not what it says it is, how can it be studied and used to generate new knowledge?
Gentle reader, if you have come this far in this little book, you will have done so in the sure knowledge that its ideas and theories (such as they are) are mine and if, as is quite possible, I am unknown to you, you do know that ALA Editions says that I am the author and their imprint on this book is a guarantee of that fact. If this or any other reputable publisher says that a book is by a par- ticular author, you can bet your bottom dollar it is. Furthermore, this or any other book picked up in twenty years’ time will have the same content that it has today.
None of these things are true about electronic resources and documents.
You do not know if an electronic something that purports to be by Oliver Onions is by him. You have no publisher to certify that fact. Worse, you have no certain knowledge that the content of the resource or document is (a) truth- ful or (b) what it was yesterday and will be tomorrow. This mutability parallels that of the Manuscript Age, when written works were laboriously copied by hand. At that time, manuscripts could be added to, copied with alterations, destroyed, substituted by entirely different texts, and generally rendered un- trustworthy. There is a whole branch of scholarship devoted to the authentication
of manuscripts, which in turn is the necessary precondition for scholarly inquiry into their content. Digital documents and resources are even more fragile and mutable than manuscripts. Digital technology enables us to make undetectable and massive changes to documents and resources. The technology almost promotes such change, inviting the reader to interact with the author in ways that may promote new creativity but sabotage the message and intent of the original author. Here is something I found at irishmusicweb.ie:
Michael Gorman 1895–1970
Michael Gorman was born in County Sligo in 1895. He lived first in Doocastle, and then Achonry. His mother, Anne McGibbon, was a singer from Kilburn and his father, a small farmer, played the flute, the bagpipes, and the melodeon. When he was young, he was taken care of by foster parents who sent him for fiddle lessons to James Gannon, who also taught Michael Coleman. Artie Shaw used to tell the story about the master and pupil when Gorman was aged about nine: “Gannon wrote out the tunes in his own system of notation on pieces of card. Slowly these cards piled up under Michael’s bed and he still could not hitch onto the fiddle. One day Gannon asked him to play The Green Mountain. Of course he could not, and Gannon broke the fiddle across Michael’s head. He still has the scar.”
Discography
Michael Gorman, the Sligo Champion, A musical biography, by Reg Hall. Topic Irish Jigs, Reels and Hornpipes, Michael Gorman and Willie Clancy, Folkways. She Moved through the Fair, Michael Gorman and Van Morrison. Topic Her Mantle So Green, Margaret Barry and Michael Gorman. Topic Irish Music in London Pubs, Margaret Barry, Michael Gorman and others, Folkways. Irish Night Out, Margaret Barry, Michael Gorman, The Dubliners and others.
Given a warning, any aficionado of Irish music could spot the changes that I have made in the text, the omissions from the biography, and the insertion of an entirely fictitious album in the discography (all very quickly and with great ease). For most people, this transfer of an altered text from the Web to the printed page, if anything, lends a spurious air of authority to the text and obscures its inauthenticity. The essential point is that there is no evidence (other than the possession of somewhat arcane knowledge) that this text is anything other than factual and complete. Once we know about its alteration, all trust is gone and the very existence of Michael Gorman, the Sligo Champion, is brought into question. In a scholarly field, such doubts are fatal. In a practical field, how
much trust can the average nonlegal person place in all the legal information that is available in such profusion on the Web?
The question of the authenticity of, and trust in, texts and images is vital to human progress. It must be resolved if electronic documents and resources are to take their full place in the emerging library. Perhaps there are technological solu- tions such as electronic “fingerprints” left with each alteration, though such schemes would seem to have insuperable difficulties in application. Perhaps we will evolve preservation techniques that preserve each manifestation of each worth- while (that word again?) document. Whatever the answers may be, they must be formulated and implemented sooner rather than later—before original electronic documents are lost in even greater numbers and before the system of scholarship and the reliable transfer of useful information is completely undermined.