Gaining control of archive collections is vital. You can be faced with bags of unsorted, unrelated archives, with boxes of seemingly disordered documents or an organisation with cupboards and hard drives stuffed full of archives. In each case, there are a few key areas to consider and actions to take which will mean that you have full control, you maintain the integrity of the collection and can access the archives you are caring for.
A question that often arises for archive services is whether they are the right place to store and provide access to a collection.
Having created information on the provenance of archives, the basis on which you care for them and agreements to cover ownership and rights, you now need to describe the archives by, creating catalogues or descriptions.
Hierarchy To demonstrate the relationships between sections of a collection, your catalogue will need to be organised using a hierarchy.
A regularly seen problem in new archive services is lack of information about the collections.