Towards an Archival Approach to Digital Identity Management

Identity, in the context of our communal online space, is a fungible concept. Who we are, how we represent ourselves, how we’re identified, how we’re verified, and how we’re investigated all are critical components of the larger notion of online identity. To that extent, the field is truly multi-faceted; cryptographers and computer scientists debate procedures of verification and authentication, sociologists and those in the cultural studies fields examine our “senses” of identity, and information scientists and systems developers attempt to develop tools that will help us collect, manage, store and retrieve elements of our personal identity at a later date. Viewing all these parts holistically, one can clearly see that the results of our lifetime identity production compose a set of documents (or, a document representation of our life). If we are to create a constant digital record of our identity production, how are we to manage it? The challenges are both traditional and