History, documentary sources and future: Use of diplomatics for the analysis of contemporary digital documentation

Abstract

This study addresses the theme of the next or imminent use, as sources of the historical research, of digital documents that, over the last few years, have increasingly settled in the archives produced by individuals or organizations. Regarding this use, it is essential to be able to assess the genuineness of the digital documentation used as a historical source, on account of a few relevant differences existing between the traditional analog document and the digital one. This essay explores the primary role diplomatics can play just by identifying solutions for verification of the genuineness in a digital environment, beginning from its most recent currents of thought and research. Within the study of the digital document, the discipline is being moulded as a “boundary discipline” that incorporates contributions by other sciences and, as such, seems to be capable of elaborating an overview of the digital document that is distant from the mainly partial views so far developed by other sciences.