Archival arrangement and description in the Cloud: a preliminary analysis

Cloud Computing is the new technology that is changing our practices and attitudes. How should archivists arrange and describe resources in such environment? More specifically, how is the cloud environment going to affect arrangement and description theory and practice? What is the impact of preserving and providing access to archives in the cloudm in light of the traditional principles of provenance, respect des fonds and original order?What is the role of traditional finding aids , if any, in describing cloud-based fesources? Should we just adapt the old tools to new context and uses, or do we need some neww tools? This paper provides a very perliminar analysis of the problem by prproviding historical background regarding descriptive standards, tools and practices, by describing a few cloud-based recordkeeping environments (from an arrangement and description perspective), and by pointing to some specific practical problems and alternate models