## 2 Materials and Methods: The Archival Paradigm for Trusting Records  
The ultimate purpose of the archivist (the term \"archivist\" here is used to refer to all records professions, that is, to all occupations whose professional education is based on archival science) is to protect the trustworthiness of archival documents, or records. (In archival theory, the terms archival documents--referring to documents produced in the course of activity and kept for further use or reference--and records are synonyms.) As [PERSON] states, \"[the archival] discipline stands on two propositions [...]: that archival documents attest facts and acts, and that their trustworthiness is dependent upon the circumstances of their generation and preservation\" [9]. These seemingly simple propositions, however, must be unpacked if one wishes to fully appreciate the archival paradigm of trust and its role in cloud-based recordkeeping. \"Records\" and \"trustworthiness\" are technical terms whose meaning brings sharp edges to the sometimes-fuzzy discussion of \"trust\" in both archival and legal contexts. Each proposition will be examined in turn. While the general discourse often uses the term records as interchangeable with data, not all data rise to the level of \"records.\" A record is properly understood as \"a document created (i.e., made or received and set aside for further action or reference) by a physical or jurialial person in the course of a practical activity as an instrument or by-product of such activity\" ([7], citing [10]). This is no mere technical statement: the record is distinguished from all other data by its ability to serve as evidence of facts and acts:  
In order to conduct affairs, and in the course of conducting affairs, certain documents are created to capture the facts of the matter or action for future reference, to extend memory of deeds and actions of all kinds, to make it enduring. Inherent in this conception of the document's capacity to extend memory, to bear evidence of acts forward in time, is a supposition about the document's relation to fact and event or act. The matter at hand, the thing being done, produces the document, which then stands as a vehicle or device to access the fact and act. Documents of this type then came to be regarded as having what jurists called full faith or public faith--or, as we would say, as possessing trustworthiness as evidence of fact and act-if they were preserved in an appointed place according to fixed and well understood administrative procedures. --[PERSON] [9]  
[PERSON] and [PERSON] ([7], p. 524) examine in detail the necessary elements of a record: \"(1) an identifiable context; (2) three identifiable persons concurring in its creation; (3) an action, in which the record participates or which the record supports either procedurally or as part of the decision-making process; (4) explicit linkages to other records within or outside the digital system, through a classification code or other unique identifier; (5) a fixed form; and (6) a stable content.\" Thus, there exist many records in electronic systems, although the conception of \"fixed form\" and \"stable content\" necessarily differs as compared to physical records: \"A digital record has a fixed form if its binary content is stored so that the message it conveys can be rendered with the same documentary presentation it had on the screen when first saved, even if its digital presentation has been changed, for example, from.doc to.pdf. A digital record has a fixed form as well if the same content can be presented on the screen in several different ways but in a limited series of pre- determined possibilities; in such a case we would have different documentary presentations of the same stored record (e.g., statistical data viewed as a pie chart, a bar chart, or a table). Stable content means that the data or content of the record cannot be intentionally or accidentally altered, overwritten or deleted.