1 / 16

Sole archivists seminar April 2011

Sole archivists seminar April 2011. Arrangement and description. Session overview. What is arrangement and description and why do we do it? Arrangement and description principles Levels of control and processing Finding aids. What is arrangement and description?.

kmercado
Download Presentation

Sole archivists seminar April 2011

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Sole archivists seminar April 2011 Arrangement and description

  2. Session overview • What is arrangement and description and why do we do it? • Arrangement and description principles • Levels of control and processing • Finding aids

  3. What is arrangement and description? • ‘A process of analysis, identification and organisation • Purposes of control, retrieval, and access • A final product which illustrates archival material, its provenancial and documentary context, its interrelationships and the ways it can be identified and used’ • Luciana Duranti: Origin and Development of the Concept of Archival Description, Archivaria, no. 35, Spring 1993, p. 48

  4. Why do we do it? • Control • Context • Access • Retrieval

  5. Principles of arrangement and description • Provenance • Context • Functions and activities of creator • Original order • Original system of accumulation

  6. Levels of control • Accessioning • Further processing

  7. Accessioning • What do you need to do to have basic physical and intellectual control over archives? • What information about the archives do you need for this basic control?

  8. Managing the A&D programme • Determine policy on descriptive and processing standards and levels • Develop criteria for further processing of collections/accessions • Between accessions • Within accessions

  9. Working with provenance • Researching context

  10. Original order • Series • Items

  11. Original order • Series: • Those records or archives having the same provenance which belong together because: • They are part a discernible filing system (alphabetical, numerical, chronological, or a combination of these) • They have been kept together because they result from the same activity • They are of similar formats and relate to a particular function • A series may consist of only one item. • Keeping Archives, 2nd ed. p. 479

  12. Original order • Identifying series: • Physical proximity • Physical storage • System of arrangement/classification • Numbering/references • Function • Content • Labelling/tags • Successive/integrated dates • Provenance • Purpose of recordkeeping

  13. What is an item? • The smallest discrete unit of record material which accumulates to form a series (i.e. a file or part file in a series of files; a volume in a series of volumes) • Keeping Archives, 2nd ed. p.473 • An individual record unit • Describing Archives in Context: A Guide to Australasian Practice, ASA Committee on Descriptive Standards, p.7

  14. Description – finding aids • Types of finding aids: • Internal to archives institution • Mainly used for control and retrieval rather than access • Internal developed by archives institution for assistance of users • General guides to holdings • At state/national/international level, contributed to by institutions

  15. Key points • ALWAYS create an accession record • Develop policies/criteria for deciding what to process further • Decide on your descriptive levels and your primary finding aids before starting A&D processing • NEVER reorganise records

More Related