The Nature of Archival Information

Archives exist as evidence of human activity. From that central fact, certain principles of documentation follow:

• Archives as evidence
• Archives as information

Archives as evidence
It is a basic premise of archival practice that particular records, whether written, recorded, filmed, or photographed, are created and assembled in the natural course of human activity. An organization carries out its daily operations, an individual goes about his or her life, working, associating with others, pursuing personal and occupational interests. As part of these activities, documents are created, assembled, and preserved. They are evidence of what has transpired. The spontaneous nature of such evidence is both its defining characteristic and the source of its continuing utility and vitality. Although individual documents are created for a particular temporal purpose, it is the fact that they have been assembled and preserved as evidence of that activity that defines them as archival. The context in which the documents were created must be understood before their content can be interpreted.

Archives as information
While archives are evidence, they may also be used for other purposes unrelated to the circumstances of their original creation. For example, a government agency may collect documents about the trucking industry as part of its regulatory activities. While such records are clearly evidence of that government function, they may also contain a wealth of information about trucking companies that is useful for business history or other secondary purposes.

Principles of Archival Documentation

• Respect des fonds/Provenance
• Original order

Principle of respect des fonds/Provenance
The organic nature of archival collections gives rise to the central principle of the archival enterprise, respect des fonds. This concept is also referred to as the principle of provenance. Defined by French archivists in the early nineteenth century, and successively refined by the German, Dutch, English, American, Canadian, and Australian traditions, this phrase has been variously interpreted. It is the formal expression of the principle that an archivist must respect, and reflects the origins of the assembled materials as an integral and organic corpus of documentation. It is the central and defining concept governing the way archivists document and organize their collections. Originally developed as a guiding principle for archivists dealing with governmental records, the concept has taken root in other organizational archives, and is applied to the tradition of historical manuscripts, where the corpus of an individual's records is treated as a logical unit, one often referred to as a fonds.

If the contents of such records are intrinsically bound up with the life of the individual or the functions of the organization from which they emanated, and cannot be fully understood apart from them, it follows that those records must be retained as a body. This is a clear and straightforward principle that in turn dictates the nature of the documentation that the archivist must assemble, and the manner in which it is presented to the user. Who was the person who created or assembled these things? What was the nature of the organization that created these documents? What was the governmental function or life activity that produced these materials? Respect des fonds/Provenance provides the cultural context in which the records become intelligible. It also serves as the basis for authenticating and assuring the reliability of the contents of the records.

In some cultural heritage contexts (e.g., the museum community) provenance is regarded as custodial history. On this Web site, however, provenance is applied in the archival sense, defined above.

Principle of original order
Given the centrality of the concept of the organic nature of archival materials, it is not surprising that archivists are also highly concerned with the physical order of records. The organization and arrangement of records reveal much about the forces, activities, and functions that produced them. Where there is little or conflicting information about the individuals or institutions responsible, internal evidence may be the archivist's best source of information about the documents. Preservation of original order is important, too, for validating their authenticity.

Unfortunately, not all materials come into archival custody in a discernible, let alone pristine order. When a pre-existing internal organization is not apparent, or is actually counterproductive to the effective analysis and use of the collection, the archivist must construct a rational order that is sensitive to the nature and uses of the collection. On the other hand, the principles described earlier imply strongly (and archivists accept this as a matter of professional faith) that the materials not be arbitrarily divided and reorganized on other principles such a geographical focus, subject matter, or time period.

Archival Materials: How Characteristics Shape Practices

Drawing from archival theory and on experience, practice, and observation, archivists can identify distinct characteristics of archival materials that affect how these materials are organized and described in archival collections. While every collection may or may not possess all of these characteristics, those listed below are most frequently encountered during the examination of a collection. These characteristics in turn directly influence descriptive practices. Each of the characteristics of archival materials on the left is matched by a corresponding descriptive practice on the right.

Table 1. Archival Materials and Practices

Items that are treated archivally are generated in the context of an activity
The most significant and distinguishing characteristic of archival materials is context. Documents are created or compiled as a result of some activity or function; as such, they are the evidence of the activities of individuals or corporate bodies. For example, individuals often keep receipts to document expenses over the course of a year for income tax purposes. Department stores maintain inventory records to document what has been bought and sold. In both cases, the documents preserved reflect activity.

Provenance-oriented descriptions are written to reflect the individual or corporate body that created the materials, and to record the activities and functions that these materials document.

Individual items in a collection are related to other items in that collection
Archival materials exist as groups of related items. Unlike museum curators and librarians, archivists view their collections not as individual items but rather as groups of documents. While an individual item may be significant in and of itself, it is generally grouped together with other documents created by the same activity. Consider, for instance, documents generated in the course of buying a house. These may include a title to the property, loan papers, correspondence, inspection papers, and survey documents. Instead of focusing on each individual document, the archivist views such a group of documents as a record of the sales transaction.

Documents that are arranged in accordance with a filing system or maintained as a unit because they result from the same activity or accumulation or filing process, or because they have a particular form, or some other relationship arising out of their creation, receipt, or use are called series. The relationships among the different document groups, or series, of a corporate body often mirror the structure of the organization. In the case of personal papers, on the other hand, there may be little structure to the organization of the materials, or the structure may be idiosyncratic, although structure and naturally occurring series may also be sound in such collections.

Materials in archival collections can also be related to items in other collections. Documents that are created by different individuals or corporate bodies, but have some other characteristic, such as topic or context, linking them together are said to be collaterally related. For example, consider the case in which four soldiers create documents describing the same battle. The first soldier describes the battle in a letter home. The second soldier in the same unit keeps a private diary. The third soldier in the opposing army sketches scenes from the day's events, while the fourth records orders given and received that day. Each soldier's record is collaterally related by the context of the battle, although the individual documents may reside in four different archival collections.

Descriptions are written to characterize documents collectively in order to record and preserve the internal relationships among them.

Items in a collection contain information about topics, events, activities, or people
Because materials in archival collections are evidence of the entire range of personal and institutional activities and functions, the information contained in them is diverse. For example, among the personal papers of an individual there may be groups of documents created as the result of religious, professional, and avocational activities. These papers may contain information about a particular church and its members, the accomplishments of committees on which the individual served, professional projects undertaken here and abroad, and papers and artifacts related to hobbies from bungee jumping to stamp collecting. Such diversity of content is commonly found in the personal papers of individuals.

Content analysis is conducted to extract this varied information so that it can be brought to the attention of the user. The more varied the information in the collection, the more extensive the analysis.

Items in a collection may be of many formats and types

A collection might consist primarily of material of one type, such as letters, or it may contain a mixture of material types such as computer files, photographs, maps, and textual records. A collection of documents relating to a wedding, for instance, may contain a marriage license, catering bills, invitations, registration books, photographs, and a video recording of the marriage ceremony and reception. Different formats and types of materials may require different descriptive practices and therefore use different descriptive standards.

Archival collections often consist of large numbers of items
Archival collections often consist of hundreds and even thousands of individual items. The larger the collection, and the more varied its content and material types, the greater the potential for complex internal relationships.

It is neither efficient nor necessary to describe each individual item in a collection. Instead, summary descriptions are written to represent and convey the primary content of the collection to the user.

Most collections lack any formal means of identification
Unlike books and other published materials, items in archival collections usually lack title pages or imprint information to identify that particular collection or group of documents. Archivists provide identifying information for collections. Because there is no formal identification, archivists extract, compile, and extrapolate information from the collection rather than transcribe information from a standardized source, such as a title page.