Archival Science - Provenance in Archival Science

Provenance in Archival Science

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 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.