This might be helpful:
http://www.progenealogists.com/sourcetypes.htm
“It is important for genealogists to understand the meaning behind the terms original vs. derivative, as well as primary vs. secondary vs. tertiary source information... Furthermore, the terms “original material” and “derivative material” confusingly combine 2 separate conditions. These two conditions are:
1) The physical description of the document
a. original
b. copy of original
c. derivative
2) The state of the information within the document
a. primary
b. secondary
c. tertiary”
The link gives examples of each and parallels much of what we’re dealing with here. The further away from the orginal document or event, the less reliable the information is. Think of it as the childhood game of Telephone where one person says something (the original or primary information) but after it goes through several persons (primary, to secondary, etc.) it becomes so far removed from the real deal that it’s garbage. Garbage is what much of the newspaper articles and internet postings are because no one cares enough to document their sources.
Thanks for the link. It looks to be quite useful.
I would say that I would go to a third level, where conflicts between documents are resolved based on the forensic characteristics of the data and how it agrees/disagrees with other documents. The amazing thing about the Lucas BC was that, despite its numerous detractors, it had the exact same birth date as was revealed in the “new” Obama BC. This information was not on the Obama-provided “COLB.”
Additionally, the provenance is helped immensely if the individuals listed on the document were real and indeed had the official role as outlined in the document at the time it was created. This is true of both the Lavender and Smith birth records.
I just don’t think that, in general, many authorities are going to let you paw through additional documents. Many places have them microfilmed or whatever, and then put out of reach. I know our county title records are all computerized: the average person will not get access to the underlying documents. I am not even sure that any party can get access to the documents unless possibly via a some sort of court order.
Orly’s Taitz’ subpoena is for the actual physical document that was generated 50 years ago. I think I can say that most of us hope that her subpoena is honored and that it turns out to be the fact that Obama was indeed not born in Hawaii.
For the rest of us, dealing with copies and derivatives is what we end up having to deal with, and have to figure out what trust factor we apply to the records which we have. A big part of the world that I live in has to deal with “Data Cleansing,” where we apply rules to help determine the true value of a data element. Most of the time, we do not distribute the original, uncleansed, data throughout the organization. This is just a (potential) shortcoming that we must learn to deal with. Hopefully, enough trust has been acquired to make the rest of the organization feel comfortable with this fact.