Even though the microfilmed copies of official government documents are often considered "original" documents, this description is not quite accurate. The government documents we see are normally "derivative" and not "original" sources.
Hopefully the information on the official record was "primary" information, meaning that the information came from an "informant" who was a credible witness or participant to the event (birth, marriage, or death) at or near the time of the event. We usually assume that the "informant" was at least reasonably intelligent, clear-thinking, and sober enough to provide accurate and correct information, even though errors in spelling were more likely if the informant was not literate.
(Sometimes even the most respectable informants did not provide correct information. At least one of our family stories revolves around the confusion caused by a father who celebrated too much before arriving at the registry office, resulting in him forgetting his daughter's first name, therefore only registering her second name, and – as human nature will have it – omitting to tell this small detail to anyone else in the family. Years later, the daughter tried to get a copy of her own birth certificate and was shocked to discover that her first name did not officially exist!)
However, even if the primary information on the one unique and original document was correct, what we see on our microfilmed image is not usually this original document.
Whereas the unique original document might have been a signed and dated form filled in by hand by the informant, what we see on our microfilms are usually the official government "registers." Whether the information in these registers were copied from the original applications or from other registers, they were already "derivatives" – i.e., derived or copied from the originals. They were therefore already at least one generation removed from the originals.
Furthermore, exact images of these registries were copied onto master microfilms – therefore at least two generations removed from the originals.
Next, the microfilms we view in libraries, archives, and elsewhere, are usually an additional generation removed from the master microfilms. Finally, the Internet images or photocopies we create from these microfilms are still another generation further away from the original documents. We are seeing an "exact image" copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of an original… at best.
Why do we need to know this? As long as the copy contains the necessary information, why should we care about the technicality of an "original" versus a "derivative"?
In my opinion, we should care very much about his subject, or, at least, be aware of the this process. With each generation away from the original, mistakes or omissions are always more likely to happen. Here are a few examples of the errors or differences possible:
- Oral information given by an informant to an official was easily misspelled, especially when surnames and place names were unfamiliar to the official, or when standardized spellings and literacy weren't yet the norm.
- Typed or handwritten copies of original sources often included normal human errors (misreading, repeating, misspelling, omitting) or errors of interpretation (especially when trying to read someone else's difficult-to-read handwriting).
- Even "exact" images can further degrade the clarity of an image, especially if the original documents were already faded, faint, or damaged. What might have been legible in an earlier generation copy, might be completely illegible in later generations.
- The black and white microfilms do not reveal the original colours of the registers or other sources. Red check marks, or other marks eventually added to the register, will not be recognized by colour. Information added years later is more easily missed or mixed up with the original.
- Sometimes the act of microfilming rearranged the original documents in relation to each other. One example are census pages when they are separated from the land schedules. Without knowing how microfilming can change how we view sources, it is easy for researchers not to see or find critical information that might be important in understanding the source documents and the information within.
- The act of photographing or microfilming affected how the documents were viewed or sorted. The sequential nature of microfilmed images cannot always reproduce the appearance of sources that were meant to be viewed in a different ways. Examples include very large documents, registers which were meant to be read with opposing pages facing each other, or Wills and Last Testaments with several sides that were originally folded in a certain specific way. Sometimes, by not seeing the way the original was presented, we fail to understand the significance of the "side" documents, or we fail to understand how the different microfilmed pages relate to each other, or how the different arrangement changes the meaning or the significance of the whole or its parts.
- Furthermore the act of microfilming sometimes added text or items. For example, in Britain census returns, new "folio" numbers were added to each registry page at the time of microfilming.
- The information from the microfilmed images might have been transcribed into a searchable index. Indexes are especially vulnerable to incorrect interpretations, spellings, or omissions, and the researchers (who depend on using these indexes) might not be able to find the correct microfilmed images and might even assume that the information or event is missing altogether.
- Internet images might be incomplete. Index errors, omitted sections or pages (i.e., land records in many population census returns), and other problems are possible online. Whenever possible, it is a good idea to go back and eventually study the microfilms or other "more original" sources, instead of only relying on what we can find on "The Web."
- The incredible reach of the Internet search engines means that we might find hundreds of people with the same name we are searching for. Finding another individual with the same name might mislead us in identifying individuals, or it might mean we combine wrong individuals with the wrong families. It is easy to make mistaken assumptions about people, places, or events when we see the information out of its context.
- Simply because information is repeated thousands of times over, does not make it any more true. False information is false, even if repeated by many. Unfortunately, a weakness of the Internet is that erroneous or completely misleading information can be typed, emailed, copied, printed, downloaded, or plagiarized by others without being questioned. Although this problem can happen with any published sources, it is especially prevalent on the Internet where copies can be made or sent to another at the flick of a button.
It is important to question our sources, no matter how original or official they might be. Whether on the Internet, in microfilms, books, newspapers, television, radio, CDs, CD-ROMS, movies, or even told by our best friend, we should always attempt to question our source, because only by learning to know how and why we need to question our sources, do we truly begin to learn more about all our sources and the part we play in understanding them.