MacNeil, Heather. "Trust and professional identity: narratives, counter-narratives and lingering ambiguities." Archival Science (2011) 11: 175-192.
Existing Citations
authenticity (p. 177): Evidence scholars and historians also began to distinguish between two kinds of trustworthiness. The verity or reliability of a record referred to its truth-value as a statement of facts, and it was assessed in relation to the proximity of the observer and recorder to the facts recorded. The authenticity of a record referred to its truth value as a physical manifestation of the facts it recorded (meaning its identity and its integrity), and it was assessed in relation to the document’s original instantiation. By the end of the nineteenth century, criteria for establishing reliability and authenticity were firmly ensconced in the common law of evidence and in historical criticism. In evidence law, they were made manifest in the circumstantial
probability of trustworthiness granted to records created in the usual and ordinary course of business, in the ‘‘best evidence’’ rule governing the production of documentary originals and in the ‘‘ancient records’’ rule that presumed the authenticity of records maintained in a natural or proper place of custody over a substantial period of time. In historical criticism, they were reflected in the analytical techniques of external and internal criticism and in the preference for primary sources over secondary ones. (†251)
authenticity (p. 178): The English archival theorist Hilary Jenkinson drew a specific connection between the authenticity of archival documents and their continuous custody by a records creator and its legitimate successors (Jenkinson 1937, pp. 9–13) (†252)
authenticity (p. 180): For Laborde, the [Imperial] Archives’ practice of respecting ‘‘the entire body’’, i.e. the fonds, made it possible to trace a document’s origins and thereby determine its authenticity. [mid-19th century, Imperial Archives of France] (†253)
authenticity (p. 187): Recent textual scholarship, for example, has drawn attention to the ways in which the authenticity of literary texts is shaped within specific socio-historical and institutional frameworks; their authenticity does not inhere in the texts themselves but is actively constructed in accordance with the
theoretical and methodological assumptions operative within those frameworks. The notion of what constitutes an authentic text, therefore, may shift as that text is resituated and re-contextualized over time. Where traditional textual scholarship aimed to restore a literary text to its ideal authentic form through the identification and stabilization of final authorial intentions, the new textual scholarship posits the virtues of multiplicity and difference and the remaking of texts over time. (†254)
authenticity (p. 187): The traditional notion of authenticity emphasizes a return to uncorrupted origins, the stabilizing and fixing of reference points, and the privileging of the singular and definitive over the multiple and indeterminate. (†255)
