When you work with TRG, you can rest assured that #TRGFindsTheFacts. You can also count on TRG to provide clear documentation of where we found those facts. With every project, we diligently record the original location of the materials we collect, tracking the source information down to the box and folder level, so that we can confidently attest to the legitimacy of the documents that we provide to our clients and cite in our analysis. Whether our final product is a report, a list of key findings, or a simple transfer of documents, every client receives a provenance guide which, should the need arise, allows them to retrace our path to the materials we collected in the field. In so doing, our clients can always independently verify that we have delivered a true and accurate copy.
Our clients appreciate the lengths that we go to in documenting accurate provenance, especially those who use our services in litigation, as challenges to document authenticity sometimes arise during legal proceedings. Sometimes, our litigation clients will ask us to provide an affidavit in addition to the record of provenance, further establishing the veracity of the evidence we collected.
On some occasions our clients request that we order officially certified documents from the archival institution where they were collected. One such request came this spring, when TRG was tasked with retracing our previous research steps to identify and order certified copies of hundreds of documents. Our research team was up for the challenge!
Using our notes and our carefully-tracked provenance information, we were able to swiftly relocate the documents and send them for official certification. This meant following several different processes in accordance with each repository’s policies. It also included tracking down some documents whose location had changed since we had originally obtained them.
Throughout the certification process, our team always works closely with each repository’s staff to ensure that everything goes smoothly, including performing detailed quality control to ensure that the certified copies match the original records. If they have missing pages or otherwise don’t match—which sometimes happens—we work with staff to obtain corrected copies.
It is important to note that while many repositories are able to provide physical certified copies, not all repositories offer certification services, and even some that do will not provide certified copies of certain records (such as photographs, fragile and oversize materials, or microfilm). In such cases either we or the archival facility have provided affidavits instead.
Our clients recognize us as the historical sleuths with a reputation for “finding even the unfindable” and delivering the historical records that they require. They also know that you can trust TRG when it comes to obtaining accurate and verifiable copies of those records.
