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. You can start by making a quick list of the contents of each box or container, which will give you a quick overview of the collection and its needs.
Firstly, number each box/container. This will allow you to link your descriptions to the archives. You should then decide what you are going to need to record for each box, which is influenced by the type of archives you have. An example could be:
Erik Erickssong Collection (singer/songwriter)
Box number: 21
Description: Lyrics and notes to ‘Triple Trouble’. Released 2022.
Number of items: 12 pages
Covering dates: 2021 – 2023
Location: Box 34, eaves of attic
Notes: Damaged by damp. Requires repair and repackaging.
Arrangement of archives
Archives are collections of related records. It is vital that these connections are maintained as evidence of the context in which they were created and this can only be achieved if the order of records are managed. Understanding the origins of an item allows us to understand its significance. If census returns weren’t kept by year and in street order, we wouldn’t be able to uncover the full picture of the country in that year, gather the stories of our ancestors and to assess how reliable a record was.
This evidential role of archives mean they should be managed differently from how you might manage a collection of library books, for example, and we outline a few considerations in the next sections.
Provenance
Definition of provenance:
- The origin or source of something
- Information regarding the origins, custody, and ownership of an item or collection
(Society of American Archivists)
Understanding the origin of an archive helps us to understand its significance and how reliable it is. This should be reflected in how the archive is arranged. Collections with similar provenance should be kept together e.g. all records from one company. Information on the creator organisation or person should be available.
Original order
Alongside recognising and maintaining the original order, managing archives should include maintaining the original order in which they were kept. It may not be immediately clear to you why archives are in a particular order, but this order demonstrates how the organisation worked, ensures authenticity of the archive and provides other essential information.
For example, you have a set of files relating to buildings within a town. Individual files might include photographs, maps, records or planning applications. They are organised annually by development. Although it may be much easier to find the files if they were organised alphabetically by street, you would lose the context, and the understanding of how the organisation worked. You might want to take the photographs out of the individual files and add them to a big collection of photographs, but you would lose the reason why they were taken.
Often you will need to sort the archives so that they return to original order, to reflect the key activities, functions, or original filing systems of the organisation or person. All these principles apply equally to digital records, where context and order can be even more important when you have larger numbers of items.