authenticity [English]

InterPARES Definition

n. ~ IP2 · The trustworthiness of a record as a record; i.e., the quality of a record that is what it purports to be and that is free from tampering or corruption.

Other Definitions

  • IP2 Dictionary (†242 ): n. ~ 1. The concept of authenticity is defined as “the quality of being authentic, or entitled to acceptance”. – 2. Established by assessing the identity and the integrity of the record. It must be possible to ascertain at all times what a record is, when it was created, by whom, what action or matter it participated in, and what its juridical/administrative, cultural, and documentary contexts were. It must also be possible to ascertain the wholeness and soundness of the record: whether it is intact or, if not, what is missing. – 3. The judgment that something is genuine, based on internal and external evidence, including its physical characteristics, structure, content, and context. n., The quality of being authentic, or entitled to acceptance. As being authoritative or duly authorized, as being what it professes in origin or authorship, as being genuine. – 4. The quality of a document of having the character and authority of the original. – 5. In Jenkinson’s formulation, the quality of archives deriving from their being preserved in the continuous custody and for the information of their creator and its legitimate successors. – 6. The quality of archival documents to bear authentic testimony of the actions, processes, and procedures which brought them into being. – 7. Requires that the scene has not been tampered with. [photography] [Arts] – 8. Whether the image had a verifiable provenance that could establish its authenticity. [Arts] – 9. The trustworthiness of a digital entity, to its being what it professes to be, as regards its identity, origin, history, authorship, integrity, and/or the accuracy with which it documents an original work. [Arts] – 10. The most common use refers to classes of performance that might synonymously be termed 'historically informed' or, 'historically aware, 'or employing 'period' or 'original' instruments and techniques. [Arts] – 11. So the claim of authenticity was based on identification of a photographer a time and place of exposure and a chain of transmission. [Arts] – 12. The term 'authenticity' can also be applied, as in the popular art world, to works that are proved to be genuine, demonstrated by the work of a particular composer. [Arts] – 13. An authentic performance is (at least) an accurate performance of a work. [Arts] – 14. The quality of being genuine or original. [Arts] – 15. The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity. [Arts] – 16. The nature of the link between a composer and a work that bears his or her name. [A version of music is authentic] in terms the nature of the link between a composer and a work that bears his or her name. [A version of music is authentic] in terms of scoring, number of movements [and is] the authentic musical text with respect to pitches, rhythm, and the like as the composer wrote it. [Arts] – 17. Authenticity and genuineness of photographs examine the photograph as a physical object and a visual image. It is here that the diplomatic notion of authenticity is useful, because it requires that we analyze the photograph in terms of its physical composition, the correspondence between the image and reality it depicts, and the relationship between the image and its label in order to understand the functional context in which the photographic image is transformed into a photographic document. [Arts] – 18. The term ‘authenticity’ has been used in several senses relating to music. The most common use refers to classes of performance that might synonymously be termed ‘historically informed’ or ‘historically aware’, or employing ‘period’ or ‘original’ instruments and techniques. [Arts] – 19. Authenticity in transcription is a relation notion that operates within the gap between transcriptions that are barely recognizable as such and transcriptions that preserve the musical content of the original work as fully as is consistent with respecting the characteristics of the medium for which the transcriptions is written. [Arts] – 20. The authenticity of a photographic print should be based on certification by the photographer. Even if two prints were virtually (or even actually)indistinguishable, only the one certified by the photographer would count as genuine or authentic. [Arts] – 21. The quality in a thing of being what it is claimed to be (valid, real, genuine, etc.), verified in archives and special collections through an investigative process known as authentication, essential in appraising the value of an item. See also: forgery. [Computer and Information Sciences]
  • NIST Risk Assessment 2012 (†482 p. B-2): The property of being genuine and being able to be verified and trusted; confidence in the validity of a transmission, a message, or message originator.
  • SAA Glossary 2005 (†241 ): n. ~ 1. The quality of being genuine, not a counterfeit, and free from tampering, and is typically inferred from internal and external evidence, including its physical characteristics, structure, content, and context. — authentic, adj. ~ 2. Perceived of as genuine, rather than as counterfeit or specious; bona fide. ¶ Notes: Authenticity is closely associated with the creator (or creators) of a record. First and foremost, an authentic record must have been created by the individual represented as the creator. The presence of a signature serves as a fundamental test for authenticity; the signature identifies the creator and establishes the relationship between the creator and the record. ¶ Authenticity can be verified by testing physical and formal characteristics of a record. The ink used to write a document must be contemporaneous with the document's purported date. The style and language of the document must be consistent with other, related documents that are accepted as authentic. ¶ Authenticity alone does not automatically imply that the content of a record is reliable. ¶ The authenticity of records and documents is usually presumed, rather than requiring affirmation. Federal rules of evidence stipulate that to be presumed authentic, records and documents must be created in the 'regular practice' of business and that there be no overt reason to suspect the trustworthiness of the record (Uniform Rules of Evidence, as approved July 1999).
  • Wikipedia (†387 s.v. authenticity): The truthfulness of origins, attributes, commitments, sincerity, devotion, and intentions.

Citations

  • Atanasiu 2013 (†361 p. 99): The terminology of authenticity is a source of considerable confusion . . . (†357)
  • Chabrow 2013 (†288 ): "We treat postings from mainstream and alternative media outlets as authentic, even if we question the veracity of the reporting and writing. You may not agree with the content of a report from MSNBC (too left-wing) or Fox News (too right-wing), but you believe what's present is authentic information from the correct source." (†250)
  • Duranti 2005 (†277 ref: Heather MacNeil and Anne Gilliland-Swetl): In common usage, the concept of authenticity is defined as 'the quality of being authentic, or entitled to acceptance.' The term authentic means 'worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact' and is synonymous with the terms genuine and bona fide.... it follows that an authentic record is a record that is what it purports to be and is free from tampering or corruption. (†240)
  • Duranti 2005 (†277 ref: Authenticity Task Force Report, p. 21): The authenticity of electronic records is threatened whenever the records are transmitted across space (i.e. when sent between persons, systems, or applications) or time (i.e., either when they are stored offline, or when the hardware or software used to process, communicate, or maintain them is upgraded or replaced.) (†241)
  • ISACA Glossary (†743 s.v. authenticity): Undisputed authorship. (†1761)
  • Isaza 2010 (†326 Quoting the Lorraine v Markel decision, 241 F): Computerized data . . . raise unique issues concerning accuracy and authenticity ... The integrity of data may be compromised in the course of discovery by improper search and retrieval techniques, data conversion, or mishandling. (†301)
  • ITrust Research Project 16 Proposal, 2013 (†388 1): In previous InterPARES research projects authenticity was not only guaranteed by the identity of the record(s), but also the integrity of the system(s) holding them. (†421)
  • MacNeil 2011 (†289 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)
  • MacNeil 2011 (†289 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)
  • MacNeil 2011 (†289 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)
  • MacNeil 2011 (†289 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)
  • MacNeil 2011 (†289 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)
  • NIST 2013 (†734 p. B-2): The property of being genuine and being able to be verified and trusted; confidence in the validity of a transmission, a message, or message originator. (†1842)