Safeguarding digital library contents and users: Assuring convenient security and data quality

Abstract

Digital library (DL) services must protect copyright holders, owners, users, and themselves against deliberate and inadvertent misuses of contents. Unobtrusive programs can provide sufficient protection, yet spare users irksome choices between distracting inconveniences and imprudent risks. Which safeguards are important depends on the kind of information resource and on the circumstances of its use. DL service can be regarded as a dramatic improvement of certain aspects of traditional library services. What computer scientists mean by integrity is similar to what librarians mean by authenticity; confidentiality is a basis for privacy; and security is a basis for maintaining authors' and owners' intellectual property rights. Collectively, confidentiality, integrity, and security are what we mean by data quality; DL service can deliver quality with good performance, convenience, and economy. We sketch some risks, identify generic mitigations, and show direction towards cost-effective and convenient solutions. DL protection extends well-known computing security practices. Novel elements include means of representing contractual obligations associated with information ownership, means of integrating different access policies chosen by different communities, means for handling very large numbers of objects and access rules, means for reducing loss outside library protection perimeters, and means for doing these and other tasks without adding to people's administrative burdens.