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Question about historiography in the archives



Dear members of the listserv:

A while ago I had a nice conversation with one of my close friends, who
happens to be an avid historian, and during our talk we got into a discussion
of the various steps and procedures a researcher like himself needs to take
in order to determine the validity of the primary source documents he uses
during his investigations.

Talking to this friend about historiography got me to think back to the
articles I've read in the archival field during my postgraduate education in
library school.  I've come across an enormous number of articles claiming
that historiography is a part of the work that archivists do, however,
virtually all of the literature I've read refers to the use of historiography
in the rather limited sense of determining a records evidential or
informational values, and not really examining the validity of the
information on it.

In fact, I have yet to see an article, book, or pamphlet that has anything to
do with archivists determining if a document is valid or not and how they go
about the task.  So my question to the members of this listserv is: do
archivists have set procedures for determining the validity of a document or
a set of documents that comes into their repository?  Do they simply follow
the procedures of the historian, who uses the materials in the archives for
their research?  Do they skip this step entirely and assume the documents
they receive are reliable?

I am very interested in learning more about this topic, and I hope that the
answers I get will help make me a better archivist.  I thank everyone in
advance for any answers I receive.


Sincerely,

Martin Firestein

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