In archival work there are the issues of reliability and authenticity. What are

Question:

In archival work there are the issues of reliability and authenticity. What are the differences between them?

I am particularly interested in the definitions of these two concepts and how they differ.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

I think reliability delves into the issues of subjective and objective thought. For instance, if an author is writing purely from his/her own experience and nobody else's then the information might not be as reliable as an author who derives knowledge from many experiences or sources.

Reliability may also include the issue of bias. For example, which would you rather take advice from: a paper written about Women's Suffrage whose author is a male mysogonist or a paper written on Women's Suffrage whose author is a proactive feminist? Both papers cover the same topic, but one will be dramatically different (and far from the truth, I might add) than the other.

Authenticity, I think, is more concerned with plagiarism. Is the author's work actually their own authentic ideas, or is the information more or less recycled and regurgitated?