Organization of Information in Archives:

The basic principles of organizations are provenance and original order. Provenance is the originator (i.e. the corporate body or individual) that created, gathered, and maintained the collection before it was sent to the archives. The term provenance is also used to show the ownership history of a particular artifact or collection of archival information. Original order is the order in which the originator of an archival collection kept or created the collection (Taylor, 2004, p. 10). Most archives maintain their collections according to provenance and the contents of the collections are kept in original order.

Archival materials can be described using accession records, catalog records or finding aids. An accession record summarizes information about the source of the collection, gives the circumstances of its acquisition, and briefly describes the physical data and contents for a collection. A finding aid gives a detailed contents note of the historical and organizational context of the collection and continues by describing its context, perhaps providing an inventory outlining what is in each box. Sometimes, it contains physical details, such as fragile material or brittle paper. A catalog record is a shorter version of a finding aid.