Chain of Custody for Paper, Not Just Digital Files
Launch library · evergreen read
Chain of custody sounds like a term borrowed from a courtroom, but it applies just as directly to an ordinary box of letters sitting in a reading room. It is the documented path a record has taken from its creation to the table in front of you, and every gap in that path weakens the evidence it carries.
Physical records can be altered, misfiled or substituted far more easily than most people assume, especially across long periods of storage and multiple changes of institutional ownership. A clean chain, backed by accession records and consistent storage history, is what lets a researcher treat a document as genuinely what it claims to be.
Writers who cite archival material well are quietly citing this chain too, noting not just what a document says but the institutional path that makes its authenticity credible in the first place, long before a single word is quoted. That extra layer of citation costs little space on the page and offers real protection when a claim later needs to be defended.