Surveying
The first steps in archival processing are to gain an understanding of the originator, to observe the material's overall size and scope, and to discover any underlying organizational scheme in the collection or record group. The first of these is needed in order to understand the context in which the papers or records were created. These last two are called "surveying" the material.
Both of these activities should be carried out with two archival principles in mind: respect des fonds and respect for original order.
In regard to the first, which may be translated as "taking into consideration the entirety of the collection," the survey must include activity to ascertain whether the materials in hand are all, or only a portion, of the entire fonds. If the archivist is in a repository that holds other parts of the fonds, he or she should assemble a plan of work that encompasses, or at least acknowledges, the entire set of materials from the same originator.
In regards to the second, the archivist must attempt to maintain the original order of the materials if the very act of record-keeping or if the record-keeping practices of the originator are in themselves evidence of the originator's activities or processes.
Read more about this topic: Archival Processing
Famous quotes containing the word surveying:
“As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most correct.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Upon looking back from the end of the last chapter and surveying the texture of what has been wrote, it is necessary, that upon this page and the five following, a good quantity of heterogeneous matter be inserted, to keep up that just balance betwixt wisdom and folly, without which a book would not hold together a single year.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)