Trusting Records

by MacNeil, Heather

• ISBN13: 9780792365990
• ISBN10: 0792365992
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-01-01
• Publisher: Kluwer Academic Pub

Summary

A trustworthy record is one that is both an accurate statement of facts and a genuine manifestation of those facts. Record trustworthiness thus has two qualitative dimensions: reliability and authenticity. Reliability means that the record is capable of standing for the facts to which it attests, while authenticity means that the record is what it claims to be. This study explores the evolution of the principles and methods for determining record trustworthiness from antiquity to the digital age, and from the perspectives of law and history. It also examines recent efforts undertaken by researchers in the field of archival science to develop methods for ensuring the trustworthiness of records created and maintained in electronic systems. Audience: The target audience for this study is legal scholars working in the field of evidence law, historians working in the field of historical methodology, and recordkeeping professionals (records managers, information technology specialists, archivists) working on the design and implementation of contemporary organizational recordkeeping systems.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction	xi
The Evolution of Legal and Historical Methods for Assessing the Trustworthiness of Records	1	(31)
The Roman Era	1	(3)
The Middle Ages	4	(6)
The Renaissance	10	(7)
The Seventeenth Century	17	(7)
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Developments in Evidence Law	24	(2)
Nineteenth-Century Developments in Historical Method	26	(4)
Conclusion	30	(2)
Trusting Records as Legal Evidence: Common Law Rules of Evidence	32	(25)
Common law vs. Civil law Procedure	32	(3)
Rules Governing the Admissibility of Documentary Evidence	35	(15)
Admissibility of Electronic Records	50	(4)
The Role of the Adversarial Process in the Legal Assessment of Record Trustworthiness	54	(2)
Conclusion	56	(1)
Trusting Records as Historical Evidence: Modern Historical Methods	57	(29)
Framework of Modernist Historical Methods	57	(2)
The External and Internal Criticism of a Record	59	(5)
Postmodernist Critiques of Historical Method	64	(7)
Challenges to Historical Method posed by Electronic Records	71	(14)
Conclusion	85	(1)
Creating and Maintaining Trustworthy Records in Electronic Systems: Archival Diplomatic Methods	86	(27)
Modern Diplomatics	86	(1)
The Application of Diplomatics to the Records of Twentieth-Century Bureaucracies	87	(2)
Contemporary Archival Diplomatics: The University of British Columbia Project	89	(15)
Limits to Ensuring Record Trustworthiness in a Bureaucracy	104	(7)
Conclusion	111	(2)
Conclusion	113	(8)
Notes	121	(26)
Bibliography	147	(12)
Index	159