Translations:Planning and Organizing/88/en

This process of grouping, ordering, and devising the structure of the material—which, in archival terms, is referred to as “arrangement”—cannot be conducted by following a cookbook-like instruction manual. It requires analysis and consideration of the material and the context in which it was created, discovered, or received. The goal is to devise a structure and order that will preserve as much of the original context of the material as possible, including the information and meaning contained in the original relationships between groups of material. To achieve this, the archival rule of thumb is to arrange the material with respect to its “provenance” (i.e., origin or creator) and “original order.” This means mirroring, or following to the greatest extent possible, the structure and order that is already contained in the material itself. The presumption here is that there is either an obvious or underlying logic and order to the organization of any given group of material selected for archiving, and that in the process of organizing the source material we can identify or uncover this logic and then mirror it.