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63-460: In archival science , a fonds (plural also fonds ) is a group of documents that share the same origin and have occurred naturally as an outgrowth of the daily workings of an agency, individual, or organization. An example of a fonds could be the writings of a poet that were never published, or the records of an institution during a specific period. Fonds are a part of a hierarchical level of description system in an archive that begins with fonds at

126-471: A librarianship perspective, records were organized according to classification schemes and their original context of creation were frequently lost or obscured. This form of archival arrangement has come to be known as the "historical manuscripts tradition". The principle of " respect des fonds " and of "original order" was adopted in Belgium and France about 1840 and spread throughout Europe during

189-513: A clearer image of fonds as public records that "should be grouped according to their origins in public administrative bodies", and this principle was termed Provenienzprinzip , or, as it is more commonly known as today among the English-speaking world, provenance . Provenance, in this sense, is the practice by archivists of keeping a group of records obtained as a unit in itself and not merging it with other documents. Provenance also

252-477: A collectable for either more or less than what they originally paid for it. Special or limited edition collectables are created with the goal of increasing demand and value of an item due to its rarity. A price guide is a resource such as a book or website that lists typical selling prices. Products often become more valuable with age. The term antique generally refers to manufactured items made over 100 years ago, although in some fields, such as antique cars ,

315-469: A collection can be a relaxing activity that counteracts the stress of life, while providing a purposeful pursuit which prevents boredom. The hobby can lead to social connections between people with similar interests and the development of new friendships. It has also been shown to be particularly common among academics. Collecting for most people is a choice, but for some it can be a compulsion, sharing characteristics with obsessive hoarding . When collecting

378-499: A file and item level description, the fonds can be kept together by implementing metadata and ensuring that the metadata has information on the relationships between items to link together the item and its higher level descriptions. Fonds in a digital archive is an issue that will continue to evolve as digital archives continue to evolve, and it remains to be seen how fonds will evolve in this context. Archival science To build and curate an archive, one must acquire and evaluate

441-633: A knowledge base of archival skills (including digital records and access systems) whereas a doctorate is more broad in scope and includes critical inquiry of its archival practices, with graduates typically preparing for careers in research and teaching. Archival science students may have academic backgrounds in areas such as anthropology , economics , history , law , library science , museum studies or information science . Professional archivist associations seek to foster study and professional development: Smaller professional regional associations provide more local professional development. These include

504-437: A record. Preserved materials in digital archives can be accessed usually by specifying their metadata, or by content-based search such as full text search when using dedicated information retrieval approaches. These usually return results ranked in terms of their relevance to user queries. Novel retrieval methods for document archives can use other ranking factors such as contemporary relevance and temporal analogy. In 2002,

567-484: A role in both the motivation for keeping a collection and the impact it has on the collector's life. These factors can be positive or negative. The hobby of collecting often goes hand-in-hand with an interest in the objects collected and what they represent, for example collecting postcards may reflect an interest in different places and cultures. For this reason, collecting can have educational benefits, and some collectors even become experts in their field. Maintaining

630-425: A shorter life expectancy than paper. Migration from older non-paper formats to newer non-paper formats is necessary for the preservation of digital media so they can remain accessible. Metadata is an important part of digital preservation as it preserves the context, usage, and migration of a digital record. Similarly to traditional preservation, metadata is required to preserve the authenticity and accessibility of

693-482: A significant lack of attention to other, diverse perspectives. In 2002, the Society of American Archivists published guidelines for a graduate program in archival studies. The guidelines were most recently revised and re-approved in 2016. Formal courses of study in archival science are available at the master's and doctoral level. A master's degree is typically a two-year professional program focusing on acquiring

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756-427: A well-defined set that can in principle be completed, and others seek a limited number of items per category (e.g. one representative item per year of manufacture or place of purchase). Collecting items by country (e.g. one collectible per country) is very common. The monetary value of objects is important to some collectors but irrelevant to others. Some collectors maintain objects in pristine condition, while others use

819-638: A wide variety of respects, most obviously in the nature and scope of the objects contained, but also in purpose, presentation, and so forth. The range of possible subjects for a collection is practically unlimited, and collectors have realised a vast number of these possibilities in practice, although some are much more popular than others. In collections of manufactured items, the objects may be antique or simply collectable . Antiques are collectable items at least 100 years old, while other collectables are arbitrarily recent. The word vintage describes relatively old collectables that are not yet antiques. Collecting

882-430: Is a childhood hobby for some people, but for others, it is a lifelong pursuit or something started in adulthood. Collectors who begin early in life often modify their goals when they get older. Some novice collectors start by purchasing items that appeal to them and then slowly work at learning how to build a collection, while others prefer to develop some background in the field before starting to buy items. The emergence of

945-667: Is another key feature of preservation. There are many strategies to preserve archives properly: rehousing items in acid-free containers, storing items in climate controlled areas, and copying deteriorating items. Digital preservation involves the implementation of policies, strategies, and actions in order to ensure that digitized documents remain accurate and accessible over time. Due to newly emerging technologies, archives began to expand and require new forms of preservation. Archival collections expanded to include new media such as microfilm , audiofiles , visualfiles , moving images , and digital documents. Many of these new types of media have

1008-870: Is increasingly alert to colonial and imperialist implications. Since 2016, the concept of "symbolic annihilation" has been used to describe the disappearance of communities through systematic or implicit lack of representation or under-representation in archives. It was initially adapted into the archival literature by Caswell from feminist uses of symbolic annihilation . This absence can also be found in archival policies as well as description and annotation practices. Preservation and usage of accurate language and descriptions of community archives ensures that community values are not neglected, and contributes to critical archival discussions regarding omissions in historical documentation. Hughes-Watkins has demonstrated that mainstream archival institutions tend to preserve homogeneous, Eurocentric content within archival practice, with

1071-535: Is key for the preservation of context within archival science. Metadata, as defined by the SAA, is "data about data". This data can help archivists locate a specific record, or a variety of records within a certain category. By assigning appropriate metadata to records or record aggregates, the archivist successfully preserves the entirety of the record and the context in which it was created. This allows for better accessibility and improves authenticity. Physical maintenance

1134-429: Is no universal set of laws or standards that governs the form or mission of archival institutions. The forms, functions, and mandates of archival programs and institutions tend to differ based on geographical location and language, the nature of the society in which they exist and the objectives of those in control of the archives. Instead, the current standards that have been provided and are most widely followed, such as

1197-448: Is passed between generations, it might sometimes be that children have inherited symptoms of obsessive–compulsive disorder . Collecting can sometimes reflect a fear of scarcity, or of discarding something and then later regretting it. Carl Jung speculated that the widespread appeal of collecting is connected to the hunting and gathering that was once necessary for human survival. Collecting is also associated with memory by association and

1260-517: Is sometimes referred to as custodial history as it takes in account the different people or organizations that held these records prior to the archive obtaining them and the way they organized them. Respect des fonds is often confused as being the same as provenance, but the two ideas, although closely related, are distinct in that provenance refers to maintaining works by specific people or organizations as separate from others, while respect des fonds adds to this by also maintaining or recreating

1323-488: Is used instead of fonds, while in the United States National Archives and Records Administration the term record group is preferred. Record groups are often compared to fonds, but in actuality they can be composed of more than one fonds or not even a full fonds. In Australian archival theory, there is recognition of the principle of respect des fonds , but the theory focuses on series as

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1386-736: The French Revolution , a newfound appreciation for historical records emerged in French society. Records began to "acquir[e] the dignity of national monuments", and their care was entrusted to scholars who were trained in libraries . The emphasis was on historical research, and it seemed obvious at the time that records should be arranged and catalogued in a manner that would "facilitate every kind of scholarly use". To support research, artificial systematic collections, often arranged by topic, were established and records were catalogued into these schemes. With archival documents approached from

1449-611: The English curios , and the origins in Paris, Amsterdam and London of the modern art market have been increasingly well documented and studied since the mid-19th century. The involvement of larger numbers of people in collecting activities came with the prosperity and increased leisure for some in the later 19th century in industrial countries. That was when collecting such items as antique china, furniture and decorative items from oriental countries became established. The first price guide

1512-649: The ICA standard, ISO standard, and DIRKS standard, act as working guidelines for archives to follow and adapt in ways that would best suit their respective needs. Following the introduction of computer technology in archival repositories, beginning in the 1970s, archivists increasingly recognized the need to develop common standards for descriptive practice, in order to facilitate the dissemination of archival descriptive information. The standard developed by archivists in Canada, Rules for Archival Description , also known as RAD,

1575-546: The New England Archivists, Society of Rocky Mountain Archivists, Society of Ohio Archivists, Society of North Carolina Archivists , and Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference. Collecting The hobby of collecting includes seeking, locating, acquiring, organizing, cataloging, displaying, storing, and maintaining items that are of interest to an individual collector . Collections differ in

1638-412: The activity they were created for; present a coherent picture through an array of content; and be in usable condition in an accessible location. An archive curator is called an archivist ; the curation of an archive is called archive administration . Archival science emerged from diplomatics , the critical analysis of documents . In 1540, Jacob von Rammingen (1510–1582) wrote the manuscript of

1701-489: The care of all the aggregates within a collection. Conservation can be included in this practice and often these two definitions overlap. Preservation emerged with the establishment of the first central archives. In 1789, during the French Revolution , the Archives Nationales was established and later, in 1794, transformed into a central archive. This was the first independent national archive and its goal

1764-441: The conviction that records entering an archive have an essential connection to the person or office that generated and used them; archivists consider all the records originating with a particular administrative unit (whether former, or still existing) to be a separate archival grouping, or " fonds ", and seek to preserve and describe the records accordingly, with close attention to evidence of how they were organized and maintained at

1827-693: The earliest known archival manual. He was an expert on registries ( Registraturen ), the German word for what later became known as archives . Rammingen elaborated a registry for the Augsburg city council. However, since he could not attend the council meeting, he described the structure and management of the archives in writing. Although this is not the first work about archival science (Rammingen himself refers to earlier literature about record-keeping), earlier manuals were usually not published. Archival science had no formal beginning. Jacob von Rammingen's manual

1890-433: The field also can pertain to individuals who maintain private collections or business archives. Archival Science is taught in colleges and universities, usually under the umbrella of Information Science or paired with a History program. A list of foundational thinkers in archival studies could include: American archivist Theodore Schellenberg and British archivist Sir Hilary Jenkinson . Some important archival thinkers of

1953-529: The first description of the principle of provenance and argued that "original order" is an essential trait of archival arrangement and description. Complementing the work of the Dutch archivists and supporting the concept of provenance were the historians of the era. Through subject-based classification aided research, historians began to concern themselves with objectivity in their source material. For its advocates, provenance provided an objective alternative to

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2016-845: The first effort to collect art by private patronage, this way artists could be free for the first time from the money given by the Church and Kings; this citizenship tradition continues today with the work of private art collectors. Many of the world's popular museums—from the Metropolitan in New York City to the Thyssen in Madrid or the Franz Mayer in Mexico City—have collections formed by the collectors that donated them to be seen by

2079-640: The following decades. Following the rise of state-run archives in France and Prussia , the increasing volume of modern records entering the archive made adherence to the manuscript tradition impossible; there were not enough resources to organize and classify each record. Provenance received its most pointed expression in the "Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives", a Dutch text published in 1898 and written by three Dutch archivists, Samuel Muller, Johan Feith, and Robert Fruin. This text provided

2142-457: The form, extent, and content of archival materials, include Machine-Readable Cataloguing (MARC format), Encoded Archival Description (EAD), and Dublin core . Provenance in archival science refers to the "origin or source of something; information regarding the origins, custody, and ownership of an item or collection". As a fundamental principle of archives, provenance refers to the individual, family, or organization that created or received

2205-615: The general public. The collecting hobby is a modern descendant of the " cabinet of curiosities " which was common among scholars with the means and opportunities to acquire unusual items from the 16th century onwards. Planned collecting of ephemeral publications goes back at least to George Thomason in the reign of Charles I and Samuel Pepys in that of Charles II. Collecting engravings and other prints by those whose means did not allow them to buy original works of art also goes back many centuries. The progress in 18th-century Paris of collecting both works of art and of curiosité , dimly echoed in

2268-506: The generally subjective classification schemes borrowed from librarianship . Historians increasingly felt that records should be maintained in their original order to better reflect the activity out of which they emerged. Although original order is a generally accepted principle, there has been some debate about applicability to personal archiving . Original order is not always ideal for personal archives. However, some archivists insist that personal records are created and maintained for much

2331-454: The hierarchy of a physical item. The practice of implementing fonds in an electronic database presents new challenges in keeping a fonds together electronically as well as physically. As Jefferson Bailey puts it, "the database logic is nonlinear and there is no original order because order is dependent upon query." In the digital context, some archives have taken to describing their holdings on a fonds or series level, or if an archive chooses to do

2394-481: The idea of respect des fonds , a principle of original order under which archivists should leave the arrangement of documents within a fonds as originated by the person or agency who created the records. However, Luciana Duranti has found evidence of the idea originating in Naples and other places prior to Circular No. 14 in 1814. Regardless of origin, respect des fonds spread rapidly across Europe after

2457-474: The idea of a fonds existing in an online database is shifting. An electronic catalog does not sort its items in the fonds level of description to follow provenance procedures unless told to do so, and it does not automatically sort the items within in a chronological order to follow respect des fonds practices either. There is also the issue of items that are born digital , which are items that have been created electronically and are not automatically subject to

2520-399: The idea of context and the importance of maintaining context. When a record is removed from its fellow records, it loses its meaning. In order to preserve a record it must be preserved in its original entirety or else it may lose its significance. This definition relates to the principle of provenance and respect des fonds as it similarly emphasizes the idea of the original record. Metadata

2583-436: The internet as a global forum for different collectors has resulted in many isolated enthusiasts finding each other. The most obvious way to categorize collections is by the type of objects collected. Most collections are of manufactured commercial items, but natural objects such as birds' eggs, butterflies, rocks, and seashells can also be the subject of a collection. For some collectors, the criterion for inclusion might not be

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2646-534: The items in a collection. In practice, provenance dictates that records of different origins should be kept separate to preserve their context. As a methodology, provenance becomes a means of describing records at the series level. Describing records at the series level to ensure that records of different origins are kept separate, provided an alternative to item-level manuscript cataloguing. The practice of provenance has two major concepts: " respect des fonds ", and " original order ". " Respect des fonds " rose from

2709-432: The items they collect. After a collectable has been purchased, its retail price no longer applies and its value is linked to what is called the secondary market . There is no secondary market for an item unless someone is willing to buy it, and an object's value is whatever the buyer is willing to pay. Depending on age, condition, supply, demand, and other factors, individuals, auctioneers, and secondary retailers may sell

2772-847: The journal Archival Science published a series of articles that analyzed systems of power in archival practice, theory, and recordkeeping. This approach was described in 2017 by Punzalan , Caswell , and Sangwand as "critical archival studies". Critical archival studies applies critical theory to archival science, with the goal of developing and implementing archival practices that are more fully inclusive of matters pertaining to race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. For example, it includes documentation of racist acts and references past omissions of such. There are synergies between critical archival studies and digital humanities , to work to resist oppression. Archival studies have focused renewed concern on recognition and representation of indigenous, community, and human rights archives. Archival practice

2835-592: The materials, and be able to access them later. To this end, archival science seeks to improve methods for appraising , storing, preserving , and processing (arranging and describing) collections of materials. An archival record preserves data that is not intended to change. In order to be of value to society, archives must be trustworthy. Therefore, an archivist has a responsibility to authenticate archival materials, such as historical documents , and to ensure their reliability, integrity, and usability. Archival records must be what they claim to be; accurately represent

2898-413: The nature of the organizations which created them, and more importantly, of the order of activities out of which they emerged. Not infrequently, practical considerations of storage mean that it is impossible to maintain the original order of records physically. In such cases, however, the original order should still be respected intellectually in the structure and arrangement of finding aids . Following

2961-570: The need for the human brain to catalogue and organise information and give meaning to ones actions. Collecting is a practice with a very old cultural history. In Mesopotamia , collecting practices have been noted among royalty and elites as far back as the 3rd millennium BCE. The Egyptian Ptolemaic dynasty collected books from all over the known world at the Library of Alexandria . The Medici family , in Renaissance Florence, made

3024-537: The original order of the creator. The ideas of fonds and respect des fonds transformed the archival world, and are still in use today. In modern archival practice, the idea of fonds still exists today, principally in Europe and North America. However, the fonds is sometimes changed slightly to suit other archival practices. For example, in the British National Archives , the term archive group

3087-518: The past century include: Canadian archivist and scholar Terry Cook , South African archivist Verne Harris , Australian archival scholar Sue McKemmish , UCLA faculty and archival scholar Anne Gilliland , University of Michigan faculty and archival scholar Margaret Hedstrom , American archival scholar and University of Pittsburgh faculty member Richard Cox, Italian archival scholar and faculty at University of British Columbia Luciana Duranti , and American museum and archival scholar David Bearman. There

3150-401: The preservation of their cultural heritage . Preservation, like provenance, is concerned with the proper representation of archival materials. Archivists are primarily concerned with maintaining the record, along with the context in which it was produced, and making this information accessible to the user. Tout ensemble is a definition relating to preservation. This definition encompasses

3213-447: The primary descriptive level, with the existence of multiple provenances. Fonds should not be confused with the term document collection , which is used for document aggregations assembled based on some shared characteristic by a collector , but it is not created by the collector and it often does not follow provenance. As archives are increasingly being digitized (scanned and stored on a computer) and moved to an electronic platform,

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3276-606: The public. Metadata comprises contextual data pertaining to a record or aggregate of records. In order to compile metadata consistently, so as to enhance the discoverability of archival materials for users, as well as support the care and preservation of the materials by the archival institution, archivists look to standards appropriate to various kinds of metadata for different purposes, including administration, description, preservation, and digital storage and retrieval. For example, common standards used by archivists for structuring descriptive metadata, which conveys information such as

3339-653: The publication of the Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives , which is commonly referred to as the Dutch Manual , in 1898, and the First International Congress of Archivists in 1910. The term fonds as created by Wailly was not as precise as it could have been and left a lot of room for interpretation of fonds. Due to this, Prussian archivists issued regulations for the arrangement of archives in 1881. These regulations provided

3402-571: The same reason as organizational archives and should follow the same principles. Preservation , as defined by the Society of American Archivists (SAA), is the act of protecting materials from physical deterioration or loss of information, ideally in a noninvasive way. The goal of preservation is to maintain as much originality as possible while retaining all the information which the material has to offer. Both scientific principles and professional practices are applied to this technique to be maximally effective. In an archival sense, preservation refers to

3465-585: The term fonds originated in French archival practice shortly after the French Revolution as Natalis de Wailly , head of the Administrative Section of the Archives Nationales of France, wrote Circular No. 14 , which laid out the idea of fonds as keeping records of the same origin together because prior to this announcement records were classified arbitrarily and inconsistently. In the same publication, Wailly also coined

3528-510: The time frame is less stringent. For antique furniture , the limit has traditionally been set in the 1830s. Collectors and dealers may use the word vintage to describe older collectables that are too young to be called antiques, including Art Deco and Art Nouveau items, Carnival and Depression glass, etc. Items which were once everyday objects but may now be collectable, as almost all examples produced have been destroyed or discarded, are called ephemera . Psychological factors can play

3591-489: The time they were created. "Original order", refers to keeping records "as nearly as possible in the same order of classification as obtained in the offices of origin", gives additional credibility to preserved records and to their originating " fonds ". Records must be kept in the same order they were placed in the course of the official activity of the agency concerned; records are not to be artificially reorganized. Records kept in their original order are more likely to reveal

3654-423: The top. Subsequent levels become more descriptive and narrower as one goes down the hierarchy. The level descriptions go from fonds to series to file and then item level. Between the fonds and series level there is sometimes a sub-fonds ( French : sous-fonds ) level, and between the series and file level there is sometimes a sub-series level. In the archival science field, it is widely agreed upon that

3717-426: The type of object but some incidental property such as the identity of its original owner. Some collectors are generalists with very broad criteria for inclusion, while others focus on a subtopic within their area of interest. Some collectors accumulate arbitrarily many objects that meet the thematic and quality requirements of their collection, others—called completists or completionists —aim to acquire all items in

3780-522: Was first published in 1990. As a standard, RAD aims to provide archivists with a consistent and common foundation for the description of archival material within a fonds , based on traditional archival principles. A comparable standard used in the United States is Describing Archives: A Content Standard , also known as DACS. These standards are in place to provide archivists with the tools for describing and making accessible archival material to

3843-516: Was printed in Heidelberg in 1571. Traditionally, archival science has involved the study of methods for preserving items in climate-controlled storage facilities. It is also the study of cataloguing and accession , of retrieval and safe handling. The advent of digital documents along with the development of electronic databases has caused the field to re-evaluate its means and ends. While generally associated with museums and libraries ,

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3906-586: Was the Stanley Gibbons catalogue issued in November 1865. The history of collecting is chronicled in the book Lock, Stock, and Barrel: The story of collecting . This well-researched book on collecting, written by Elizabeth and Douglas Rigby, was published by J. B. Lippincott & Co. , a major publisher in Philadelphia. "An important book as well as a delightful one. I recommend it urgently as

3969-470: Was to preserve and store documents and records as they were. This trend gained popularity and soon other countries began establishing national archives for the same reasons, to maintain and preserve their records as they were created and received. Cultural and scientific change reinforced the concept and practice of preservation. In the late eighteenth century, many museums, national libraries, and national archives were established in Europe; therefore ensuring

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